“Ancient trees are unique habitats for the conservation of threatened species because they can resist and buffer climate warming,” write the authors, including Gianluca Piovesan and Charles H. Cannon. Some of these trees, such as bristlecone pines in the White Mountains of California and Nevada can live up to 5,000 years and act as massive carbon storage. Ancient trees are hotspots for mycorrhizal connectivity, the symbiotic relationship with underground fungi that supplies plants with many of the nutrients they need to survive....

Enter the most exciting technical achievement in astronomy for decades, the detection of gravitational waves (GW) caused by the mergers of black holes or neutron stars with each other by LIGO-Virgo, soon to be joined by other similar GW detection facilities in other countries. The solution to the cosmological dilemma is likely to be settled soon by these instruments according to a new Nature paper by Hsin-Yu Chen of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative, Maya Fishbach, and Daniel E....

The new type of skin patch contains hundreds of micro-needles, each thinner than a human hair, which are loaded with the drug Beta-3 adrenergic receptor agonist or another drug called thyroid hormone T3 triiodothyronine. When the patch is pressed into the skin for about two minutes, these micro-needles become embedded in the skin and detach from the patch, which can then be removed. As the needles degrade, the drug molecules then slowly diffuse to the energy-storing white fat underneath the skin layer, turning them into energy-burning brown fats....

Rapid climate change during the Middle Stone Age, between 80,000 and 40,000 years ago, during the Middle Stone Age, sparked surges in cultural innovation in early modern human populations, according to new research. The research, published in the journal Nature Communications, was conducted by a team of scientists from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, the Natural History Museum in London, and the University of Barcelona. The scientists studied a marine sediment core off the coast of South Africa and reconstructed terrestrial climate variability over the last 100,000 years....

A research team led by Dr. Youn-kyoung Baek and Dr. Jung-goo Lee succeeded in developing the world’s first technology to consecutively manufacture epsilon iron oxide that can absorb millimeter wave with a high coercive force equivalent to that of neodymium (Nd) magnets. The researchers are in the Department of Magnetic Materials in Powder Materials Division at the Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS), a government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT....

The Arctic is one of the fastest warming places on the planet. As temperatures rise, the perpetually frozen layer of soil, called permafrost, begins to thaw, releasing methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. These methane emissions can accelerate future warming — but to understand to what extent, we need to know how much methane may be emitted, when and what environmental factors may influence its release. That’s a tricky feat....

How much of a treatment is mind over matter? It is well documented that people often feel better after taking a treatment without active ingredients simply because they believe it’s real — known as the placebo effect. A team of researchers from Michigan State University, University of Michigan and Dartmouth College is the first to demonstrate that placebos reduce brain markers of emotional distress even when people know they are taking one....

A new study from MIT sheds light on just why these drugs did not work for arthritis. By untangling the complex interactions between different cell pathways involved in inflammation, the researchers discovered that shutting off p38 triggers other inflammatory pathways. The findings demonstrate the importance of studying a potential drug’s impact on complex cellular systems, says Doug Lauffenburger, head of MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering and the senior author of the study....

Scientists developed a model showing that a fragile, temporary state of immunity emerged during the early epidemic but got destroyed as people changed their social behaviors over time, leading to future waves of infection. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have developed a new mathematical model for predicting how epidemics such as COVID-19 spread. This model not only accounts for individuals’ varying biological susceptibility to infection but also their levels of social activity, which naturally change over time....

The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases daily with no sign of stopping or slowing. Too much of civilization depends on the burning of fossil fuels, and even if we can develop a replacement energy source, much of the damage has already been done. Without removal, the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere will continue to wreak havoc for centuries. Atmospheric carbon capture is a potential remedy to this problem....

Obesity in young people has become a significant public health problem. In the U.S., the percentage of children and adolescents affected by obesity has more than tripled since the 1970s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data from the World Health Organization indicates that the number of overweight or obese infants and young children ages five years or younger increased from 32 million globally in 1990 to 41 million in 2016....

Fast Facts: Seasonal dark streaks on Mars have been described as possible signs of flowing water; a new study shows they are a better fit to dry flow processes.The steepness of more than 150 of these features was assessed with a telescopic camera on a NASA Mars orbiter.The findings add to evidence that these environments may be too dry for microbes to thrive, despite the presence of water in hydrated salts....

Imagine if the rings of Saturn suddenly disappeared. Astronomers have witnessed the equivalent around a young sun-like star called TYC 8241 2652. Enormous amounts of dust known to circle the star are unexpectedly nowhere to be found. “It’s like the classic magician’s trick: now you see it, now you don’t. Only in this case we’re talking about enough dust to fill an inner solar system and it really is gone!...

At one of the world’s deepest undersea hydrothermal vents, tiny shrimp are piled on top of each other, layer upon layer, crawling on rock chimneys that spew hot water. Bacteria, inside the shrimps’ mouths and in specially evolved gill covers, produce organic matter that feed the crustaceans. Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are studying this mysterious ecosystem in the Caribbean to get clues about what life could be like on other planetary bodies, such as Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, which has a subsurface ocean....

The material, developed by researchers from the University of Cambridge, is made of tiny particles of gold coated in a polymer shell, and then squeezed into microdroplets of water in oil. When exposed to heat or light, the particles stick together, changing the color of the material. The results are reported in the journal Advanced Optical Materials. In nature, animals such as chameleons and cuttlefish are able to change color thanks to chromatophores: skin cells with contractile fibers that move pigments around....

A nanoscale coating that’s at least 95 percent air repels the broadest range of liquids of any material in its class, causing them to bounce off the treated surface, according to the University of Michigan engineering researchers who developed it. In addition to super stain-resistant clothes, the coating could lead to breathable garments to protect soldiers and scientists from chemicals, and advanced waterproof paints that dramatically reduce drag on ships....

Former NASA astronaut James A. McDivitt, who commanded the Gemini IV and Apollo 9 missions, died on October 13. McDivitt passed away peacefully in his sleep surrounded by his family and friends in Tucson, Arizona. He was 93 years old. McDivitt was born June 10, 1929, in Chicago. He graduated from Kalamazoo Central High School, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, before going on to receive a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Michigan, graduating first in his class in 1959....

“After seeing our extensive hardware testing and sophisticated modeling, an independent review panel has confirmed that the observatory we have designed will work,” said Julie McEnery, the Roman Space Telescope senior project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We know what it will look like and what it will be capable of. Now that the groundwork is laid, the team is thrilled to continue building and testing the observatory they’ve envisaged....

The group, led by researchers from the University of Copenhagen’s Center for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark worked for the past three years to verify their discovery, which they initially made in 2015 using NASA data. Their finding is published in the November 14 issue of the journal Science Advances. An international team of scientists came together to unravel the mystery of Greenland’s Hiawatha crater. This video shows how that discovery came together....

Wednesday’s flight plan took the IceBridge team over Pine Island Glacier as part of the long-running campaign to collect year-over-year measurements of sea ice, glaciers, and critical regions of Earth’s ice sheets. As NASA’s DC-8 flew its pre-determined flight pattern, the new iceberg that calved in late October also came into view. On October 29, the National Ice Center, which tracks icebergs for navigation purposes, estimated the surface area of B-46 at 66 square nautical miles, though satellite imagery and the IceBridge flight showed that the main iceberg is already beginning to break up....