How much light has been emitted by all galaxies since the cosmos began? After all, every photon (particle of light) from ultraviolet to far infrared wavelengths ever radiated by all galaxies that ever existed throughout cosmic history is still speeding through the Universe today. If we could carefully measure the number and energy (wavelength) of all those photons—not only at the present time, but also back in time—we might learn important secrets about the nature and evolution of the Universe, including how similar or different ancient galaxies were compared to the galaxies we see today....

This current interdisciplinary collaboration follows up on prior work from 2013. At that time, the researchers found that there was just one microbial species coming from the Acidiphilium genus in the Poás volcanic lake. Unsurprisingly, this type of bacteria is commonly found in acid mine drainages and hydrothermal systems, and they are known to have multiple genes adapted to diverse surroundings. In the following years, there was a series of eruptions and the team returned in 2017 to see whether there had been changes in the microbial diversity, as well as to study the organisms’ biochemical processes more comprehensively....

The team analyzed three meteorites with their original protocol and found sugars in two meteorites. “Analysis of sugars in meteorites is so difficult. Over the past several years, we have investigated the techniques of sugar analysis in such samples and constructed our original method” says lead author, Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University. Amino acids and nucleobases, other vitally important compounds in the building block of life, have been found in meteorites previously....

Food-waste study reveals trends behind discarded items. Americans throw out a lot more food than they expect they will, food waste that is likely driven in part by ambiguous date labels on packages, a new study has found. “People eat a lot less of their refrigerated food than they expect to, and they’re likely throwing out perfectly good food because they misunderstand labels,” said Brian Roe, the study’s senior author and a professor of agricultural, environmental, and development economics at The Ohio State University....

Now the four Crew-5 members are officially Expedition 68 flight engineers and will spend the next few days getting used to life on orbit as they spend time familiarizing themselves with space station systems. NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, have a long list of space experiments they will conduct during their stay on the orbital laboratory....

A new study from Columbia researchers, in collaboration with scientists at the University of Hong Kong, adds more evidence that the COVID-19 omicron variant can evade the immune protection conferred by vaccines and natural infection and suggests the need for new vaccines and treatments that anticipate how the virus may soon evolve. The findings were published on December 23, 2021, in the journal Nature by David Ho, MD, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and the Clyde’56 and Helen Wu Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons....

In principle, such magnets can greatly simplify the design and production of twisty fusion facilities called stellarators, according to scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany. PPPL founder Lyman Spitzer Jr. invented the stellarator in the early 1950s. Most stellarators use a set of complex twisted coils that spiral like stripes on a candy cane to produce magnetic fields that shape and control the plasma that fuels fusion reactions....

By analyzing virus genomes from over 7,500 people infected with Covid-19, a UCL-led research team has characterized patterns of diversity of SARS-CoV-2 virus genome, offering clues to direct drugs and vaccine targets. The study, led by the UCL Genetics Institute, identified close to 200 recurrent genetic mutations in the virus, highlighting how it may be adapting and evolving to its human hosts. Researchers found that a large proportion of the global genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 is found in all hardest-hit countries, suggesting extensive global transmission from early on in the epidemic and the absence of single ‘Patient Zeroes’ in most countries....

Dr. Cornelia Wetzker borrowed an innovative label-free technique from cancer research in order to investigate the metabolism of living biological tissues. This involves the measurement of the decay of the intrinsic fluorescence of the metabolic coenzyme NADH — a matter of nanoseconds, requiring a specialized microscope. This measure, also known as fluorescence lifetime, serves as a cell-specific signature and characterizes the specific metabolic pathways of the tissue. Cancer cells have a shorter NADH fluorescence lifetime, are thus more glycolytic, and can therefore be distinguished from healthy cells....

ESO’s GRAVITY instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) Interferometer has been used by scientists from a consortium of European institutions, including ESO, to observe flares of infrared radiation coming from the accretion disc around Sagittarius A*, the massive object at the heart of the Milky Way. The observed flares provide long-awaited confirmation that the object in the center of our galaxy is, as has long been assumed, a supermassive black hole....

Most people with substantial hair loss have the condition androgenic alopecia. This is also known as male- or female-pattern baldness. In this condition, hair follicles can be damaged by androgens, inflammation, or an overabundance of reactive oxygen species, such as oxygen free radicals. When the levels of oxygen free radicals are too high, they can overwhelm the body’s antioxidant enzymes which typically keep them in check. One of these enzymes is superoxide dismutase (SOD), and researchers have recently created SOD mimics called “nanozymes....

Primary care practices are projected to lose more than $65,000 in revenue per full-time physician in 2020, following drastic declines in office visits and fees for services from March to May during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study led by researchers in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School. The lost revenue adds up to a shortfall of $15 billion to primary care practices across the United States, according to the analysis to be published June 25 in Health Affairs....

The team, through their study of mice, uncovered that a small group of airway neurons play a crucial role in informing the brain about a flu infection. They also observed evidence of a secondary pathway from the lungs to the brain that becomes active during later in the infection. The study was recently published in the journal Nature. Although most people are sick several times a year, scientific knowledge of how the brain evokes the feeling of sickness has lagged behind research on other bodily states such as hunger and thirst....

One telescope finds the treasure chest, and the other narrows in on the gold coins. Data from two European Space Telescope missions, Planck and Herschel, have together identified some of the oldest and rarest clusters of galaxies in the distant cosmos. Planck’s all-sky images revealed the clumps of bright galaxies, while Herschel data allowed researchers to inspect the galactic gems more closely and confirm the discovery. NASA played a key role in the Planck and Herschel missions....

All previous studies have used a graphite capsule, and therefore, the sample was saturated with carbon. However, the bulk of Earth is unlikely to be saturated with carbon given the carbon abundance in chondrites which are believed to be the building blocks of the Earth. Moreover, it is known that the partition coefficient varies with the bulk concentration of the element of interest even if experimental conditions are identical. In order to investigate the effect of bulk carbon concentration on its liquid metal-silicate partitioning behavior, researchers at Ehime University, Kyoto University, and JAMSTEC have conducted new carbon partitioning experiments at carbon-undersaturated conditions using a boron nitride capsule....

The CDC updated its guidance for avoiding COVID-19, saying that infection from touching surfaces is not the major way the virus spreads. The bigger risk is spending time with infected people. But although it’s clear that some virus particles move through air, how far and how widely they travel is still not understood. University of Chicago researchers are trying to change that. A new study is underway to monitor the air in the hospital rooms of patients at University of Chicago Medicine, which could help scientists uncover how airborne virus particles travel around infected people....

Now is the best time to get a glimpse of Comet C/2021 A1, better known as Comet Leonard. It’s named for its discoverer, Gregory Leonard, a senior research specialist at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Every night with clear skies, astronomers with LPL’s Catalina Sky Survey scan the sky for near-Earth asteroids – space rocks with the potential of venturing close to Earth at some point. During one such routine observation run on January 3, Leonard spotted a fuzzy patch of light tracking across the starfield background in a sequence of four images taken with the 1....

John Johnson, professor emeritus of psychology at Penn State, recently conducted research with several colleagues revealing that an individual’s enjoyment of horror films could have better prepared them for the COVID-19 pandemic as opposed to others who do not enjoy frightening entertainment. Their findings are documented in Personality and Individual Differences. “My latest research collaboration was unique in that my colleagues wanted to identify factors beyond personality that contributed to people’s psychological preparedness and resilience in the face of the pandemic,” Johnson explained....

Astronomers from the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute and Leiden Observatory, both in the Netherlands, used data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ESA’s Gaia space observatory to measure the motions of stars in the Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy. The Sculptor Dwarf is a satellite galaxy orbiting the Milky Way, 300,000 light-years away from Earth. Only by combining the datasets from these two successful ESA missions — produced more than 12 years apart — could the scientists directly measure the exact 3D motions of stars within the Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy....

Astronomers spotted over 22,000 globular clusters, some of which had formed a bridge connecting a pair of well-known interacting galaxies (NGC 4889 and NGC 4874). A globular cluster is a spherical group of stars that usually orbits a galaxy as a self-contained satellite. However, the globular clusters studied here are of a different type, intracluster globular clusters. Specifically, these are globular clusters that are not bound to an individual galaxy, but to a galaxy cluster — in this case, Coma....