These two weeds are a growing problem in Louisiana, where nearly half of the United States’ sugarcane is grown. Itchgrass competition can reduce the sugar yield in cane by 7-17%. And, the longer it competes with sugarcane, the more the sugar yield is reduced. Although divine nightshade is a relative newcomer to Louisiana, it can reduce sugar production by up to 43%. Therefore, researchers are looking at the effect of heat to control itchgrass and divine nightshade seed before it emerges in sugarcane fields....

Physical Scientist J.T. Heineck of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California gets his first glimpse at a set of long-awaited images and takes a moment to reflect on more than 10 years of technique development – an effort that has led to a milestone for NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. NASA has successfully tested an advanced air-to-air photographic technology in flight, capturing the first-ever images of the interaction of shockwaves from two supersonic aircraft in flight....

Three cases of ischaemic stroke reported in young adults following administration of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Clots in the arteries (arterial thrombosis) are the most common cause of stroke (ischaemic stroke) and have been reported in detail for the first time in young adults who received the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in a letter from UK stroke specialists published online in Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry. While rare cases of blood clots have been reported previously after administration of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, these have affected veins and most specifically veins in the brain (cerebral venous sinuses)....

The new study on biodiversity in the Antarctic ecosystems is led by the lecturer Conxita Àvila, from the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona, and counts on the participation of the experts from the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC), the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the University of Hull (United Kingdom). Passengers into the cold Tourism, maritime transport and scientific research are some human activities that favored the expansion of non-native organisms – insects, plants, etc....

A human journey to Mars, at first glance, offers an inexhaustible amount of complexities. To bring a mission to the Red Planet from fiction to fact, NASA’s Human Research Program has organized hazards astronauts will encounter on a continual basis into five classifications. Pooling the challenges into categories allows for an organized effort to overcome the obstacles that lay before such a mission. However, these hazards do not stand alone....

“Put simply, we demonstrated that under the right conditions, light can induce a state of superconductivity in an iron compound. So it has no resistance to an electric current,” explained Project Researcher Takeshi Suzuki from the Institute for Solid State Physics at the University of Tokyo. “In the past, it may even have been called alchemy, but in reality, we understand the physical processes that instantly changed a normal metal into a superconductor....

Columbus, Ohio—Though scientists have long believed that complex organic molecules couldn’t survive fossilization, some 350-million-year-old remains of aquatic sea creatures uncovered in Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa have challenged that assumption. The spindly animals with feathery arms—called crinoids, but better known today by the plant-like name “sea lily”—appear to have been buried alive in storms during the Carboniferous Period, when North America was covered with vast inland seas. Buried quickly and isolated from the water above by layers of fine-grained sediment, their porous skeletons gradually filled with minerals, but some of the pores containing organic molecules were sealed intact....

Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the cosmos that are held together by gravity, consisting of hundreds or thousands of galaxies embedded in hot gas, as well as invisible dark matter. The largest supermassive black holes known are in galaxies at the centers of these clusters. For decades, astronomers have looked for galaxy clusters containing rich nurseries of stars in their central galaxies. Instead, they found powerful, giant black holes pumping out energy through jets of high-energy particles and keeping the gas too warm to form many stars....

The tendrils of jellyfish galaxies extend beyond the bright disc of the galaxy core. This particular observation comes from an investigation into the sizes, masses, and ages of the clumps of star formation in the tendrils of jellyfish galaxies. Astronomers hope that this will provide a breakthrough in understanding the connection between ram-pressure stripping — the process that creates the tendrils of jellyfish galaxies — and star formation. This galactic seascape was captured by Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), a versatile instrument that captures images at ultraviolet and visible wavelengths....

Made mainly of precious metals, these coveted catalysts are shaped like gems. Each particle has 24 different faces that present atoms at the surface in ways that make them more catalytically active than those available commercially. The methodology takes basic metal precursors, and, using heat and stabilizing trace elements, rapidly transforms their shape into structures that are highly active catalytically. Commercial products such as fuel cells — important sources of clean energy — rely on such catalysts....

Inside an Anopheles gambiae mosquito, Plasmodium undergoes a series of infection steps before reaching the mosquito’s salivary gland, from which it spreads to bitten humans. This infection cycle relies on the activity of several mosquito proteins. Recently developed CRISPR/Cas9 tools offer new opportunities to study these proteins and determine whether they can be targeted to block malaria transmission. Dimopoulos group had previously identified and examined several mosquito proteins involved in Plasmodium infection, including fibrinogen-related protein 1 (FREP1)....

Although galaxy collisions are common — especially in the early universe — most are not head-on impacts like the collision that likely created this Arp-Madore system 704 million light-years from Earth. This violent encounter gives the system an arresting ring structure, but only for a short amount of time. The crash has pulled and stretched the galaxies’ discs of gas, dust, and stars outward, forming the ring of intense star formation that shapes the “nose” and “face” features of the system....

Once thought to be formed soon after the Universe itself, new research finds Globular Clusters may be only around 9 billion years oldGlobular cluster’s age was revised following research into the age of binary star systems within the clusters, with both thought to have been born at the same timeFindings may change understanding of how the Milky Way and similar galaxies formed, with well over 100 Globular Clusters known to exist within the galaxyNew models uncovered that old stellar populations may be significantly less ancient than previously thought, according to lead researcher Dr....

Today (May 12, 2022) at 9:00 a.m. EDT (6:00 a.m. PDT, 15:00 CEST) The European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project will hold a press conference to present new Milky Way results from the EHT. The ESO Director General will deliver the opening words. EHT Project Director Huib Jan van Langevelde and EHT Collaboration Board Founding Chair Anton Zensus will also deliver remarks. A panel of EHT researchers will explain the result and answer questions....

Scientists have shown for the first time that heart cells regulate their circadian rhythms through daily changes in the levels of sodium and potassium ions inside the cell. The different levels of sodium and potassium ions inside and outside heart cells allow the electrical impulse that causes their contraction and drives the heartbeat. Cellular ion concentrations were thought to be fairly constant, but scientists have now found heart cells actually alter their internal sodium and potassium levels across the day and night....

Adds to mounting concerns about potential heart harms of energy drinks, say report authors. Heavy energy drink consumption may be linked to heart failure, doctors have warned in the journal BMJ Case Reports after treating a 21-year-old, who had regularly drunk 4 such cans every day for around 2 years. This report adds to the growing body of published evidence on, and mounting concerns about, the potential heart harms of these drinks, say the authors....

The hepatitis B virus (HBV) is one of the most widespread human pathogens known today, affecting over 250 million people worldwide. However, its origin and evolutionary history remain unclear. Studying the evolution and history of the virus has to date been especially difficult, because until now viral DNA had not been successfully recovered from prehistoric samples. In the present study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal eLife and is due to be published on May 10, 2018, an international team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology at Kiel University, not only recovered ancient viral DNA from skeletons but also reconstructed the genomes of three strains of HBV....

The scientists at the LHC, CERN, presented their latest data with this duality problem. Since last July, when evidence indicating that the Higgs boson had been discovered was revealed, scientists have been probing at its properties. The LHC can detect the Higgs in different ways. One channel produces two characteristic photons while another creates four leptons. The two decay paths give scientists a distinct value for the mass of the Higgs....

Study helps explain baffling neurological symptoms — and why they’re so unpredictable. New research offers an up-close view of how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can spread to the brain. The study helps explain the alarming array of neurological symptoms reported in some patients with COVID-19, as well as why some patients suffer severe neurological effects while others experience none at all. The researchers report evidence that SARS-CoV-2 can infect both the nerve cells that power our brains (neurons) and the cells in the brain and spinal cord that support and protect neurons (astrocytes)....

The galaxy, NGC 1277, started its life with a bang long ago, ferociously churning out stars 1,000 times faster than seen in our own Milky Way today. But it abruptly went quiescent as the baby boomer stars aged and grew ever redder. The findings are being published online in the March 12 issue of the science journal Nature. This video zooms into the relic galaxy NGC 1277 near the center of the Perseus cluster of over 1,000 galaxies, located 240 million light-years from Earth....