The remarkable 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera, which was first created at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy for the Dark Energy Survey, has now been observing stars for ten years. The international DES cooperation uses deep-space data to investigate dark energy, a phenomenon that is speeding up the expansion of space. The Dark Energy Survey, whose scientists are now analyzing data from 2013 to 2019, isn’t the only project to benefit from the powerful piece of equipment....

Yale astronomers have caught the Milky Way having a snack. Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, researchers have discovered a band, or stream, of stars believed to be the remnant of an ancient star cluster slowly being ingested by the Milky Way, Earth’s home galaxy. “The Milky Way is constantly gobbling up small galaxies and star clusters,” said Ana Bonaca, a Yale graduate student and lead author of a study forthcoming in Astrophysical Journal Letters....

An international team of paleontologists pieced together the fossilized skeletons of a new species of tetrapod called Parmastega aelidae and found it had a skull which resembled a crocodile – a unique feature among the earliest tetrapods – with eyes situated well above the top of its head, suggesting it was capable of “keeping an eye” on unsuspecting prey while swimming close to the surface of a tropical lagoon. The unusual combination of anatomical features has cast new light on how one of the most distant ancestors hunted and its lifestyle....

An update on NASA’s Artemis I Moon mission … The right moves for a small satellite mission … And a bright idea to search for water ice on the Moon … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! Artemis I Moon Mission Still Targeting November Launch NASA is still targeting November 14 for the launch of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft on Artemis I....

Sleep deprivation may pave the way to cocaine addiction. Too-little sleep can increase the rewarding properties of cocaine, according to new research in mice published in eNeuro. Poor sleep and cocaine use go hand-in-hand. Both acute and chronic cocaine use disrupts sleep, and sleep disturbances can increase the likelihood of relapse. But it’s unclear how sleep deprivation contributes to cocaine addiction. The orexin system, which influences motivated and addictive behaviors through the peptide orexin, may underly the relationship: orexin activity increases during sleep deprivation, and blocking orexin receptors reduces reward-seeking....

The study did not evaluate whether dust can transmit the virus to humans. It could, however, offer another option for monitoring COVID-19 outbreaks in specific buildings, including nursing homes, offices, or schools. Karen Dannemiller, senior author of the study, has experience studying dust and its relationship to potential hazards like mold and microbes. “When the pandemic started, we really wanted to find a way that we could help contribute knowledge that might help mitigate this crisis,” said Dannemiller, assistant professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering and environmental health sciences at The Ohio State University....

The study also adds more evidence that people eat more when given larger portions. The researchers found that study participants ate, on average, 43% more when the portion size of a meal was increased by 75%. “Although studies have consistently found that people eat more when they are served larger portions, less is known about why this happens or why some people are more responsive to the effects of large portions than others,” said first author Paige Cunningham, a doctoral student at The Pennsylvania State University....

Antimicrobial peptides fight viral diseases but a structural flaw makes them difficult to use as drugs. A deft molecular fix could create synthetic “peptoids” to cure diseases. Among the powerful biochemicals of the human immune system, peptides are one of the best. Most commonly found in the places where microbes love to take root – mucous membranes of the eye, mouth, nose, and lungs – they’re known to kill all sorts of tiny invaders, such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi....

A modeling study suggests a majority of adult COVID-19 hospitalizations nationwide are attributable to at least one of four pre-existing conditions: obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and heart failure, in that order. The study, published today (February 25, 2021) in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) and led by researchers at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, used a mathematical simulation to estimate the number and proportion of national COVID-19 hospitalizations that could have been prevented if Americans did not suffer from four major cardiometabolic conditions....

An international team of evolutionary biologists and paleontologists have reconstructed the evolution of the avian brain using a massive dataset of brain volumes from dinosaurs, extinct birds like Archaeopteryx and the Great Auk, and modern birds. The study, published online today in the journal Current Biology, reveals that prior to the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period, birds and non-avian dinosaurs had similar relative brain sizes. After the extinction, the brain-body scaling relationship shifted dramatically as some types of birds underwent an explosive radiation to re-occupy ecological space vacated by extinct groups....

“In aircraft engines, fuel is injected into the combustor in a fine spray of droplets with sizes somewhat similar to what is ejected while coughing or sneezing,” he says. “While the specific conditions of a respiratory spray are different, the same fundamental physics are involved.” Back in March, as the pandemic ramped up across Canada and other nations, Chaudhuri called up some long-time collaborators: Professor Abhishek Saha at the University of California San Diego, and Professor Saptarshi Basu of the Indian Institute of Science....

This unprecedented achievement represents an important landmark in the development of quantum technologies. Details of the research were published on March 20 in the journal Nature Physics. Stimulated light emission, postulated by Einstein in 1916, is widely observed for large numbers of photons and laid the basis for the invention of the laser. With this research, stimulated emission has now been observed for single photons. Specifically, the scientists could measure the direct time delay between one photon and a pair of bound photons scattering off a single quantum dot, a type of artificially created atom....

Energy flows through a system of atoms or molecules by a series of processes such as transfers, emissions, or decay. You can visualize some of these details like passing a ball (the energy) to someone else (another particle), except the pass happens quicker than the blink of an eye, so fast that the details about the exchange are not well understood. Imagine the same exchange happening in a busy room, with others bumping into you and generally complicating and slowing the pass....

Studying the violent collisions of black holes and neutron stars may soon provide a new measurement of the Universe’s expansion rate, helping to resolve a long-standing dispute, suggests a new simulation study led by researchers at University College London. Our two current best ways of estimating the Universe’s rate of expansion – measuring the brightness and speed of pulsating and exploding stars, and looking at fluctuations in radiation from the early Universe – give very different answers, suggesting our theory of the Universe may be wrong....

Adequate levels of vitamin D during young adulthood may reduce the risk of adult-onset type 1 diabetes by as much as 50 percent, according to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). If confirmed in future studies, the findings could lead to a role for vitamin D supplementation in preventing this serious autoimmune disease in adults. “It is surprising that a serious disease such as type 1 diabetes could perhaps be prevented by a simple and safe intervention,” said lead author Kassandra Munger, a research associate in the department of nutrition at HSPH....

New research from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA shows how vitamin D3 and omega-3 fatty acids may enhance the immune system’s ability to clear the brain of amyloid plaques, shedding further light on a possible role for nutritional substances in boosting immunity to help fight Alzheimer’s disease. A team of academic researchers has pinpointed how vitamin D3 and omega-3 fatty acids may enhance the immune system’s ability to clear the brain of amyloid plaques, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease....

A new study that used biomarkers to link use of feminine hygiene products to VOC exposure is published in Journal of Women’s Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. (Click here to read the full-text article on the Journal of Women’s Health website through November 30, 2019.) The article entitled “Exposure to Volatile Organic Compounds and Use of Feminine Hygiene Products among Reproductive-Aged Women in the United States” was coauthored by Ning Ding, MPH, Stuart Batterman, Ph....

The governor states that she will allocate $3.3 million to back some of the panel’s recommendations. Growing carbon dioxide gas emissions have dissolved into the world’s ocean, increasing the acidity of waters by 30% since 1750. Washington, which farms oysters, clams, and mussels, is vulnerable to acidification from seasonal, wind-driven upwelling events that bring low-pH waters from the deep ocean to the shores and land-based nutrient runoff from farming fuels algal growth, which also lowers the ocean’s pH....

Much of human invention and innovation has been the result of our discovery and replication of natural phenomena, from birds serving to inspire human flight, to whales allowing us to dive deep into the ocean with submarines. For the first time ever, researchers have captured at the nanometer level the gliding machinery of the bacterium Mycoplasma mobile. Their findings were published in mBio. This brings us closer to understanding the origin and operating principle of motility, which could serve as a basis for the next generation of nanoscale devices and pharmaceuticals....

Accordingly, space organizations have started considering how to keep time on the Moon. Having begun with a meeting at ESA’s ESTEC technology center in the Netherlands last November, the discussion is part of a larger effort to agree a common ‘LunaNet’ architecture covering lunar communication and navigation services. Architecture for joint lunar exploration “LunaNet is a framework of mutually agreed-upon standards, protocols, and interface requirements allowing future lunar missions to work together, conceptually similar to what we did on Earth for joint use of GPS and Galileo,” explains Javier Ventura-Traveset, ESA’s Moonlight Navigation Manager, coordinating ESA contributions to LunaNet....