“In previous research, the brain was usually considered as a whole,” says Fabienne Fox, neuroscientist and lead author of the current study. “Our goal was to take a more detailed look at the brain and find out which regions of the brain physical activity impacts most.” Extensive Data from the Rhineland study Fox and associates utilized information from the Rhineland Study, a large population-based study carried out by DZNE in the vicinity of Bonn, for their study....

Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) are a long-sought “missing link” in black hole evolution. There have been a few other IMBH candidates found to date. They are larger than stellar-mass black holes formed by the collapse of massive stars but smaller than the supermassive black holes that lie at the cores of large galaxies. This new black hole is over 50,000 times the mass of our Sun. IMBHs are hard to find....

The study will be published in the journal Physical Review D. This hypothesis was proposed decades ago in order to unify quantum theory with Einstein’s theory of gravity, which is the only one of nature’s four fundamental forces not to have been incorporated into the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Physicists have tried to use the Large Hadron Collider, gravitational wave detectors, and observations of distant cosmic explosions in order to determine whether space is grainy, but so far the results have proven to be inconclusive....

A clinical study led by Dr. Jordan Feld, a liver specialist at Toronto Centre for Liver Disease, University Health Network (UHN), showed an experimental antiviral drug can significantly speed up recovery for COVID-19 outpatients — patients who do not need to be hospitalized. This could become an important intervention to treat infected patients and help curb community spread, while COVID-19 vaccines are rolled out this year. “This treatment has large therapeutic potential, especially at this moment as we see aggressive variants of the virus spreading around the globe which are less sensitive to both vaccines and treatment with antibodies,” says Dr....

Scientists have been able to generate the world’s fastest laser pulse with a beam shot for 67 attoseconds (0.000000000000000067 seconds). This breaks the previous record of 80 attoseconds that was established in 2008. This could help engineers see extremely rapid quantum mechanical processes, like the movements of electrons during chemical reactions. The researchers published their findings in the journal Optics Letters. This will allow the study of electron motions with attosecond pulses....

The fear that people developed at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak has given way to anger over the course of the pandemic, a study of global sentiments led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has found. In an analysis of over 20 million tweets in English related to the coronavirus, an international team of communication researchers observed that tweets reflecting fear, while dominant at the start of the outbreak due to the uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus, have tapered off over the course of the pandemic....

This is the first 360-degree panorama in color of the Gale Crater landing site taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover. The panorama was made from thumbnail versions of images taken by the Mast Camera. Scientists will be taking a closer look at several splotches in the foreground that appear gray. These areas show the effects of the descent stage’s rocket engines blasting the ground. What appeared as a dark strip of dunes in previous, black-and-white pictures from Curiosity can also be seen along the top of this mosaic, but the color images also reveal additional shades of reddish brown around the dunes, likely indicating different textures or materials....

A new study from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg and Eckerd College estimates the waters of Tampa Bay contain four billion particles of microplastics, raising new questions about the impact of pollution on marine life in this vital ecosystem. This is the first measurement of microplastic abundance and distribution in the region. Researchers hope the findings will provide the necessary data to inform the debate around policies to reduce plastic in the marine environment....

As the world celebrates the 100th anniversary of the prominent scientist behind the discovery of the structure of DNA tomorrow, the ExoMars rover named after her prepares to leave her symbolic footprint on the Red Planet. The robotic explorer will drill down to two meters into the Martian surface to sample the soil, analyze its composition and search for evidence of life buried underground. The mission is set for launch in 2022....

Ice is continuously streaming off Greenland’s melting glaciers at an accelerating rate, dramatically increasing global sea levels. New results published in the journal Nature on November 9 indicate that existing models have underestimated how much ice will be lost during the 21st century. Hence, its contribution to sea-level rise will be significantly higher. By 2100, the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream will contribute six times as much to the rising sea level as previous models suggested, adding between 13,5 to 15,5 mm (0....

The most common lineages of fish found today in oceans, lakes, and rivers evolved about the same time as mammals and birds, a new Yale University-led study shows. The comparative genetic analysis of more than 200 fish species, reported the week of August 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, gave an earlier than expected evolutionary birthday to well-known teleost — or ray-finned — fish such as salmon, bass, or tuna....

The finding was a collaborative effort from teams at KAUST following a comparison of Betacoronavirus genomes. “We have long-standing expertise in analyzing genomic data at KAUST’s Computational Bioscience Research Center,” says molecular biologist, Takashi Gojobori. Gojobori, Carlos M. Duarte and a team of scientists compared the genomes of 24 Betacoronaviruses, including four SARS-CoV-2 viruses, which causes COVID-19. Two of the four were sequenced in the United States, while the other two were sequenced in China....

A review of clinical tests from three major U.S. laboratories shows whole exome sequencing routinely fails to adequately analyze large segments of DNA, a potentially critical deficiency that can prevent doctors from accurately diagnosing potential genetic disorders, from epilepsy to cancer. The reanalysis by UT Southwestern shows each lab on average adequately examined less than three-quarters of the genes — 34, 66, and 69 percent coverage — and had startlingly wide gaps in their ability to detect specific disorders....

The country’s mineral deposits have been created over hundreds of millions of years through processes that are still not completely understood. One of these processes, that has troubled scientists and geologists for years, is the origin of chromitite layers hosted by layered intrusions – a major source of chromium on our planet. This process has been a mystery for decades, as scientists tried to work out how layers of pure chromite form from magmas that are coming from Earth’s mantle....

While efforts to raise domesticated reindeer on the island failed, herds of wild reindeer prosper in East Iceland. While most of the world’s populations of reindeer and caribou have declined significantly in recent decades, Iceland’s herd is doing fine. Its population grew rapidly in recent decades and is now stable. Reindeer were first brought by royal decree from Norway to Iceland in the 1700s after diseases had killed about 60 percent of the island’s sheep population....

Messenger RNA or mRNA technology, used in COVID-19 vaccines, works by teaching our cells to recognize and protect us against infectious diseases. One of the challenges with this new technology is that it must be kept cold to maintain stability during transport and storage. If this new project is successful, plant-based mRNA vaccines — which can be eaten — could overcome this challenge with the ability to be stored at room temperature....

Scientists for the first time have developed a single molecule that can absorb sunlight efficiently and also act as a catalyst to transform solar energy into hydrogen, a clean alternative to fuel for things like gas-powered vehicles. This new molecule collects energy from the entire visible spectrum, and can harness more than 50% more solar energy than current solar cells can. The finding could help humans transition away from fossil fuels and toward energy sources that do not contribute to climate change....

Returning croplands to forests is a sustainability gold standard to mitigate climate change impacts and promote conservation. That is, new research shows, unless you’re a poor farmer. “Those sweeping conservation efforts in returning cropland to vegetated land might have done so with an until-now hidden consequence: it increased the wildlife damage to remaining cropland and thus caused unintended cost that whittled away at the program’s compensation for farmers,” said Hongbo Yang, lead author in a recent paper in the Ecological Economics journal....

Feathers are a sleek, intricate evolutionary innovation that makes flight possible for birds, but in addition to their stiff, aerodynamic feathers used for flight, birds also keep a layer of soft, fluffy down feathers between their bodies and their outermost feathers to regulate body temperature. Using the Smithsonian’s collection of 625,000 bird specimens, Sahas Barve, a Peter Buck Fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, led a new study to examine feathers across 249 species of Himalayan songbirds, finding that birds living at higher elevations have more of the fluffy down — the type of feathers humans stuff their jackets with — than birds from lower elevations....

The new owl species was described in a paper published on October 30 in the open-access journal ZooKeys based on multiple lines of evidence such as morphology, plumage color and pattern, vocalizations, and genetics. Data was gathered and processed by an international team led by Martim Melo (CIBIO and Natural History and Science Museum of the University of Porto), Bárbara Freitas (CIBIO and the Spanish National Museum of Natural Sciences), and Angelica Crottini (CIBIO)....