This unique approach, developed by Dr. Gavin Bell and Dr. Yorck Ramachers from Warwick’s Department of Physics, uses gas – rather than vacuum – to transport electrical energy. The device is essentially a thin double-glazed window. The outer pane is transparent and conducts electricity. The inner window is coated with a special material, which acts as a source of electrons under illumination by sunlight – this is called a “photocathode....

The investigation reveals that out of 153 trial sites for Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, only nine were inspected by the FDA prior to licensing. In addition, just 10 out of 99 trial sites for Moderna and five out of 73 trial sites for remdesivir received inspections from the FDA. Notably, the FDA received a complaint from whistle-blower Brook Jackson, about misconduct at three clinical trial sites that were testing Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine, while she was employed as a regional director....

The discovery was led by members of the same UK-US enzyme engineering team which, in April, improved a plastic-digesting enzyme, a potential breakthrough for the recycling of plastic waste. The study published in Nature Communications was led by Professor John McGeehan at the University of Portsmouth, Dr. Gregg Beckham at the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Professor Jen Dubois at Montana State University, and Professor Ken Houk at the University of California, Los Angeles....

The illusion, which the creators label “Scintillating Starburst,” evokes illusory rays that seem to shimmer or scintillate–like a starburst. Composed of several concentric star polygons, the images prompt viewers to see bright fleeting rays emanating from the center that are not actually there. “The research illustrates how the brain ‘connects the dots’ to create a subjective reality in what we see, highlighting the constructive nature of perception,” explains Pascal Wallisch, a clinical associate professor in New York University’s Department of Psychology and Center for Data Science and senior author of the paper, which appears in the journal i-Perception....

On August 14, 2021, a small near-Earth asteroid (NEA) designated 2021 PJ1 passed our planet at a distance of over 1 million miles (about 1.7 million kilometers). Between 65 and 100 feet (20 and 30 meters) wide, the recently discovered asteroid wasn’t a threat to Earth. But this asteroid’s approach was historic, marking the 1,000th NEA to be observed by planetary radar in just over 50 years. And only seven days later, planetary radar observed the 1,001st such object, but this one was much larger....

This week, NASA’s Goldstone radar is tracking a large asteroid as it passes by Earth, and obtaining unusually clear images of the tumbling space rock. “There is no danger of a collision with Earth,” says Lance Benner of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program. “At closest approach on December 12th, asteroid 4179 Toutatis will be 7 million km away or 18 times farther than the Moon.” Asteroid Toutatis is well known to astronomers; it passes by Earth’s orbit every 4 years....

Opioid use is increasing in pregnancy as well as in the general population. A “Five things to know about …” practice article on opioid disuse in pregnancy in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) provides information on how to manage this vulnerable population. Reference: “Opioid use disorder in pregnancy” (PDF) by Anshula Ambasta MD MPH and Mary Malebranche MD MA, 23 September 2019, CMAJ.DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.190391

It appears that sunlight-driven photoreactions could be an important sink of buoyant plastics at sea. Sunlight also may have a role in reducing plastics to sizes below those captured by oceanic studies. This theory could partly explain how more than 98 percent of the plastics entering the oceans go missing every year. However, direct, experimental evidence for the photochemical degradation of marine plastics remains rare. A team of scientists from Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, East China Normal University, and Northeastern University conducted a unique study to help elucidate the mystery of missing plastic fragments at sea....

Humanity is on the threshold of being able to detect signs of alien life on other worlds. By studying exoplanet atmospheres, we can look for gases like oxygen and methane that only coexist if replenished by life. But those gases come from simple life forms like microbes. What about advanced civilizations? Would they leave any detectable signs? They might, if they spew industrial pollution into the atmosphere. New research by theorists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) shows that we could spot the fingerprints of certain pollutants under ideal conditions....

The model, which was featured on the cover of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), describes neural development over three hierarchical levels of information processing: the first sensorimotor level explores how the brain’s inner activity learns patterns from perception and associates them with action;the cognitive level examines how the brain contextually combines those patterns;lastly, the conscious level considers how the brain dissociates from the outside world and manipulates learned patterns (via memory) no longer accessible to perception....

University of Rochester researchers at the Institute of Optics have come up with a novel technology to deliver those attributes with maximum effect. In a paper in Science Advances, they describe imprinting freeform optics with a nanophotonic optical element called “a metasurface.” The metasurface is a veritable forest of tiny, silver, nanoscale structures on a thin metallic film that conforms, in this advance, to the freeform shape of the optics—realizing a new optical component the researchers call a metaform....

Like humans, stars change with age and ultimately die. For the Sun and stars like it, this change will take it through a phase where, having burned all the hydrogen in its core, it swells up into a large and bright red-giant star. Eventually, the dying Sun will lose its outer layers, leaving behind its core: a hot and dense star called a white dwarf. Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, have spotted a peculiar gas cloud that resulted from a confrontation between two stars....

Mount Vesuvius, located 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) southeast of Naples, Italy, is the only active volcano on Europe’s mainland. It is a composite stratovolcano, made up of pyroclastic flows, lava flows, and debris from lahars that accumulated to form the volcanic cone. In this natural-color image, acquired on January 2, 2022, by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, the cone of Mount Vesuvius appears through a break in the clouds....

Tooth loss associated with higher risk of heart disease. Adults missing one or more teeth from nontraumatic events more prone to heart attack, stroke. Adults who have lost teeth due to nontraumatic reasons may have a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease according to a presentation at the American College of Cardiology Middle East Conference 2019 together with the 10th Emirates Cardiac Society Congress. The conference is October 3-5 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates....

Using deductive reasoning, the bot identifies friend or foe to ensure victory over humans in certain online games. Many gaming bots have been built to keep up with human players. Earlier this year, a team from Carnegie Mellon University developed the world’s first bot that can beat professionals in multiplayer poker. DeepMind’s AlphaGo made headlines in 2016 for besting a professional Go player. Several bots have also been built to beat professional chess players or join forces in cooperative games such as online capture the flag....

An airborne radar developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, has returned to Hawaii to continue its study of Kilauea volcano, Hawaii’s current most active volcano. The Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, or UAVSAR, mounted in a pod under NASA’s G-III research aircraft from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California, returned to Hawaii’s Big Island on January 7, 2012. The one-week airborne campaign will help scientists better understand processes occurring under Earth’s surface at Kilauea....

In space, hidden behind the dusty veils of nebulae, clouds of gas clump together and collapse, forming the structures from which stars are born: star-forming cores. These cluster together, accumulate matter, and fragment, eventually giving rise to a cluster of young stars of various masses, whose distribution was described by Edwin Salpeter as an astrophysical law in 1955. Astronomers had already noticed that the ratio of massive objects to non-massive objects was the same in clusters of star-forming cores as in clusters of newly-formed stars....

It’s time to develop alternatives to antibiotics for small infections, according to a new thought paper by scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and to do so quickly. It has been widely reported that bacteria will evolve to render antibiotics mostly ineffective by mid-century, and current strategies to make up for the projected shortfalls haven’t worked. One possible problem is that drug development strategies have focused on replacing antibiotics in extreme infections, such as sepsis, where every minute without an effective drug increases the risk of death....

For the first time, astronomers at the University of Sydney have discovered a slimmer type of red giant star. These stars have undergone dramatic weight loss, possibly as a result of the presence of a greedy neighbor. The discovery, which was published in Nature Astronomy, is a significant step forward in our knowledge of the lives of stars in the Milky Way, our nearest stellar neighbors. In our galaxy, there are millions of red giant stars....

The study was recently published in the journal Cell. Prof. FU’s team used DNA capture techniques to retrieve ancient DNA from Guangxi and Fujian, two provincial-level regions in southern China. They sequenced genome-wide DNA from 31 individuals dating back 11,747 to 194 years ago. Of these, two date back to more than 10,000 years ago, making them the oldest genomes sampled from southern East Asia and Southeast Asia to date....