Astronomers have used the Subaru Telescope to show that the HAT-P-7 planetary system, which is about 1040 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus, includes at least two giant planets and one companion star (Figure 1). The discovery of a previously unknown companion (HAT-P-7B) to the central star (HAT-P-7) as well as confirmation of another giant planet (HAT-P-7c) orbiting outside of the retrograde planet HAT-P-7b offer new insights into how retrograde planets (Notes 1 and 2) may form and endure....

Researchers at The University of Nottingham have discovered a new layer of the human cornea located at the back of the cornea between the corneal stroma and Descemet’s membrane. Scientists have discovered a previously undetected layer in the cornea, the clear window at the front of the human eye. The breakthrough, announced in a study published in the academic journal Ophthalmology, could help surgeons to dramatically improve outcomes for patients undergoing corneal grafts and transplants....

Modified multi-layered bismuth superconductor for higher critical temperatures. Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have created a new layered superconducting material with a conducting layer made of bismuth, silver, tin, sulfur, and selenium. The conducting layer features four distinct sublayers; by introducing more elements, they were able to achieve unparalleled customizability and a higher “critical temperature” below which superconductivity is observed, a key objective of superconductor research. Their design strategy may be applied to engineer new and improved superconducting materials....

Dr. Hyoungchul Kim’s research team, from the Center for Energy Materials Research at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST, Acting President Yoon, Seok-jin), have successfully developed a sulfide-based superionic conductor that can be used to a high-performance solid electrolyte in all-solid-state batteries. This new material delivers the Li-ion conductivity of 10.2 mS/cm at room temperature and is comparable to that of liquid electrolytes used for typical Li-ion batteries....

The sun is nearly the roundest object ever measured. If scaled to the size of a beach ball, it would be so round that the difference between the widest and narrow diameters would be much less than the width of a human hair. The sun rotates every 28 days, and because it doesn’t have a solid surface, it should be slightly flattened. This tiny flattening has been studied with many instruments for almost 50 years to learn about the sun’s rotation, especially the rotation below its surface, which we can’t see directly....

We are all too familiar with the threats to our planet’s ecosystems: global warming, forest fires, nitrogen deposition, biodiversity decline, and even mass extinctions. But what actually makes ecosystems stable or fragile? What prevents one species from outcompeting all others, and hence drives them to extinction? These questions have captivated biologists since Darwin. We have learned that food-webs and cooperation between species are key pieces to this puzzle, because they help explain how species then depend on one another to survive....

The results, which have a broad array of applications that may include better cancer diagnostic tools, were recently published in the Nano Letters, a prestigious peer-reviewed journal published by the American Chemical Society in a paper entitled “Microcavity-Mediated Spectrally Tunable Amplification of Absorption in Plasmonic Nanoantennas,” The research was funded by the National Science Foundation. To create a device capable of overcoming the diffraction limit, graduate student Qinglan Huang and her adviser, Holonyak Lab Director Brian T....

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are supporting this field of research by developing a promising new kind of light-based sensor to study tissue growth in the lab. The NIST team’s proof-of-concept work, published today in Sensors and Actuators B, demonstrates a small sensor that uses a light-based signal to measure pH, the measurement unit for acidity, an important property in cell-growth studies. The same basic design could be used to measure other qualities such as the presence of calcium, cell growth factor, and certain antibodies....

In the quest to resolve several puzzles discovered in the initial condition of the Big Bang, scientists have developed a number of theories to describe the primordial universe, the most successful of which — known as cosmic inflation — describes how the universe dramatically expanded in size in a fleeting fraction of a second right before the Big Bang. But as successful as the inflationary theory has been, controversies have led to active debates over the years....

This age-related loss of stem cell function can be reversed by a 24-hour fast, according to a new study from MIT biologists. The researchers found that fasting dramatically improves stem cells’ ability to regenerate, in both aged and young mice. In fasting mice, cells begin breaking down fatty acids instead of glucose, a change that stimulates the stem cells to become more regenerative. The researchers found that they could also boost regeneration with a molecule that activates the same metabolic switch....

A new statistical analysis supports beliefs that COVID-19 became more lethal in the U.K. in late 2020, while also suggesting that multiple factors—not just the alpha variant of the virus that causes COVID-19—were to blame. Patrick Pietzonka of the University of Cambridge, UK, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on November 24, 2021. Studying how the lethality of COVID-19 has changed over time in different regions could help guide continued efforts to address this disease....

In the high-stakes world of international sports, even the slightest advantage can make all the difference in an athlete’s performance. As a result, athletes often turn to training methods and performance-enhancing aids to give them a competitive edge. Caffeine, a stimulant that affects the nervous system, is a popular choice among athletes as a performance-enhancing aid. In fact, World Athletics (formerly known as the International Association of Athletics Federations) has recognized caffeine as an ergogenic aid in a consensus statement on nutritional strategy for athletics....

Optical manipulation on the nano-scale, or nanophotonics, has become a critical research area, as researchers seek ways to meet the ever-increasing demand for information processing and communications. The ability to control and manipulate light on the nanometer scale will lead to numerous applications including data communication, imaging, ranging, sensing, spectroscopy, and quantum and neural circuits (think LIDAR — light detection and ranging — for self-driving cars and faster video-on-demand, for example)....

All life on Earth 500 million years ago lived in the oceans, but scientists know little about how these animals and algae developed. A newly discovered fossil deposit near Kunming, China, may hold the keys to understanding how these organisms laid the foundations for life on land and at sea today, according to an international team of researchers. The fossil deposit, called the Haiyan Lagerstätte, contains an exceptionally preserved trove of early vertebrates and other rare, soft-bodied organisms, more than 50% of which are in the larval and juvenile stages of development....

Rodents and pigs share with certain aquatic organisms the ability to use their intestines for respiration, finds a study publishing May 14th in the journal Med. The researchers demonstrated that the delivery of oxygen gas or oxygenated liquid through the rectum provided vital rescue to two mammalian models of respiratory failure. “Artificial respiratory support plays a vital role in the clinical management of respiratory failure due to severe illnesses such as pneumonia or acute respiratory distress syndrome,” says senior study author Takanori Takebe (@TakebeLab) of the Tokyo Medical and Dental University and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center....

Around a minute into flight, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 rocket exceeded the speed of sound a, and soon thereafter reached Max-Q – the moment of maximum dynamic pressure on the rocket. Booster engine cutoff occurred on time, the first and second stages separated as planned, and the Centaur second stage main engine started its burn on schedule. The payload fairing that protected the JPSS-2 satellite during the first minutes of ascent jettisoned as expected....

Obesity is linked to a nearly 6-fold increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2D), with high genetic risk and unfavorable lifestyle also increasing risk but to a much lesser extent. These are the conclusions of new research that will be presented at this year’s Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Barcelona, Spain (September 16-20), by Hermina Jakupovic, University of Copenhagen, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues....

The glaciers are melting rapidly: Greenland’s ice is now melting seven times faster than in the 1990s — an alarming discovery, since climate change will likely intensify this melting in the future, causing the sea level to rise more rapidly. Accordingly, researchers are now working to better understand the underlying mechanisms of this melting. Ice melts on the surface because it is exposed to the sun and rising temperatures. But it has now also begun melting from below — including in northeast Greenland, which is home to several ‘ice tongues’....

Professor Joshua Reiss from Queen Mary’s School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science has written for The Conversation on the audio history of the Olympics and COVID-19’s impact on Olympic sound design. The modern-era Olympics are among the largest sporting events in the world – but relatively few people actually get to watch the action live and in person. So the four-yearly Games have proved to be an important driver for audiovisual progress....

Despite low absolute risk, Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine associated with increased risk of carditis. Markedly increased risk in adolescents after 2nd dose may warrant refined vaccination strategies A case-control study found that despite low absolute risk, there is an increased relative risk of carditis associated with BNT162b2 (commonly-known as Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine) vaccination. Considering the markedly increased risk in adolescents after the second dose, vaccination strategies may need to continuously consider the risk and benefits for different sub-populations, rather than taking a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach....