However, recent findings imply that in certain galaxies where star formation is especially vigorous, the IMF may not take the same form as commonly assumed in the Milky Way. To confirm these findings, astronomers need to gather more direct observational evidence within the Milky Way. Now, based on the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST, also known as the Guo Shou Jing telescope), a research team led by Prof....

Even though you may not realize it, each time you recall a memory—such as your first time riding a bike or walking into your high school prom—your brain changes the memory ever so slightly. It’s almost like adding an Instagram filter, with details being filled in and information being updated or lost with each recall. “We’re inadvertently applying filters to our past experiences,” says Steve Ramirez (CAS’10), a Boston University (BU) neuroscientist....

The study, which centered on two groups of theropod dinosaurs – the alvarezsaurs and therizinosaurs – aimed to uncover the mystery surrounding their peculiar claws. The findings revealed that the rock-pick-like claws of the alvarezsaurs were utilized for digging, while their close relatives, the giant therizinosaurs, used their overgrown, meter-long, sickle-shaped claws for display purposes. The new work is led by Zichuan Qin, a Ph.D. student at the University of Bristol and the IVPP....

Pneumonia is the leading cause of death in children worldwide.A new study identifies an unusual pattern of deadly bacteria with resistance to all standard antibiotic therapy in children with pneumonia in Bangladesh.The findings signal an emerging pandemic of fatal antibiotic resistance. Resistance to antibiotics is common and often deadly among children with pneumonia in Bangladesh, according to a new study coauthored by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) with colleagues at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (abbreviated as icddr,b)....

With the advent of semiconductor transistors—invented in 1947 as a replacement for bulky and inefficient vacuum tubes—has come the consistent demand for faster, more energy-efficient technologies. To fill this need, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh are proposing a new spin on an old method: a switch from the use of silicon electronics back to vacuums as a medium for electron transport—exhibiting a significant paradigm shift in electronics. Their findings were published online on July 1 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology....

You can’t make a banana split without bananas. And you can’t generate stable regulatory T cells without Vitamin C or enzymes called TET proteins, it appears. Regulatory T cells (Tregs) help control inflammation and autoimmunity in the body. Tregs are so important, in fact, that scientists are working to generate stable induced Tregs (iTregs) in vitro for use as treatments for autoimmune diseases as well as rejection to transplanted organs....

NASA invites you to take a behind-the-scenes look at how the agency explores Earth and outer space with a new monthly television series that premieres this week. The inaugural episode of “NASA Science Live” will air at 3 p.m. EST Wednesday, February 27, on NASA Television, the agency’s website, Facebook Watch, YouTube, and Ustream. Viewers will be able to submit questions on social media using the hashtag #askNASA or by leaving a comment in the chat section on Facebook....

Although imaging the disk is significant, the team’s ultimate goal is to search for giant planets in wide orbits, similar to the gas and ice giants of our solar system. By delving into new, uncharted territory in direct imaging around low-mass stars, this work brings them one, huge step closer to achieving that goal. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has imaged the inner workings of a dusty disk surrounding a nearby red dwarf star....

Our DNA is very similar to that of the chimpanzee, which in evolutionary terms is our closest living relative. Stem cell researchers at Lund University in Sweden have now found a previously overlooked part of our DNA, so-called non-coded DNA, that appears to contribute to a difference which, despite all our similarities, may explain why our brains work differently. The study is published in the journal Cell Stem Cell. The chimpanzee is our closest living relative in evolutionary terms and research suggests our kinship derives from a common ancestor....

Scientists had long suspected that this may be the case, but the process has not been observed and confirmed until now. With this new understanding, researchers may be able to harness the mechanism for use in new kinds of optoelectronic devices. The unusual findings are reported today in the journal Nature Physics. The team was led by Nuh Gedik, a professor of physics at MIT, with graduate student Alfred Zong, postdoc Anshul Kogar, and 16 others at MIT, Stanford University, and Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) in Russia....

New research has discovered that being in snowy landscapes can boost one’s body appreciation. Prior studies have already established that being in green spaces, such as parks and forests, and ‘blue environments’, like by the coast or near a river, can enhance one’s body image. Now new research, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, has discovered that white spaces, in this case, a snow-covered woodland, can have a similar effect....

After searching hundreds of millions of objects across our sky, NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has turned up no evidence of the hypothesized celestial body in our solar system commonly dubbed “Planet X.” Researchers previously had theorized about the existence of this large, but unseen celestial body, suspected to lie somewhere beyond the orbit of Pluto. In addition to “Planet X,” the body had garnered other nicknames, including “Nemesis” and “Tyche....

Blame it on HAL 9000, Clippy’s constant cheerful interruptions, or any navigational system leading delivery drivers to dead-end destinations. In the workspace, people and robots don’t always get along. But as more artificial intelligence systems and robots aid human workers, building trust between them is key to getting the job done. One University of Georgia professor is seeking to bridge that gap with assistance from the U.S. military. Aaron Schecter, an assistant professor in the Terry College’s department of management information systems, received two grants – worth nearly $2 million – from the U....

Beneath the vivid hues of this eye-shaped cloud, named Abell 78, a tale of stellar life and death is unfolding. At the center of the nebula, a dying star – not unlike our Sun – which shed its outer layers on its way to oblivion has, for a brief period of time, come back to echo its past glory. Releasing their outer shells is the usual fate for any star with a mass of 0....

The Yale study, led by Gerald I. Shulman, professor of medicine and cellular & molecular physiology, examined the rate of fat and carbohydrate metabolism in rats during starvation as they transitioned from a fed to a fasting state. The research team’s analyses yielded new insights about leptin biology. During starvation, Shulman said, plasma leptin levels fall, activating a pathway that promotes the breakdown of fat and mediates this critical shift from glucose to fat metabolism....

A machine learning method called “deep learning,” which has been widely used in face recognition and other image- and speech-recognition applications, has shown promise in helping astronomers analyze images of galaxies and understand how they form and evolve. In a new study, accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal, researchers used computer simulations of galaxy formation to train a deep learning algorithm, which then proved surprisingly good at analyzing images of galaxies from the Hubble Space Telescope....

The use of disposable plasticized medical gowns – both conventional and biodegradable – has surged since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Landfills now brim with them. Because the biodegradable version decomposes faster than conventional gowns, popular wisdom held that it offers a greener option by less space use and chronic emissions in landfills. That wisdom may be wrong. “There’s no magic bullet to this problem,” said Fengqi You, professor in energy systems engineering at Cornell University....

Physicists from LMU have uncovered a feature with which the decoherence of a quantum system can be tuned and substantially reduced, providing an important advance for the field of quantum information processing. LMU researchers have uncovered a novel effect that, in principle, offers a means of stabilizing quantum systems against decoherence. The discovery could represent a major step forward for quantum information processing. The laws of classical physics provide an adequate description of how our Universe behaves on the macroscopic scales that are accessible to our everyday experience....

SARS-CoV-2 enters a cell when its spike protein binds to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor on the cell’s surface. LSCs – a natural mixture of lung epithelial stem cells and mesenchymal cells – also express ACE2, making them a perfect vehicle for tricking the virus. “If you think of the spike protein as a key and the cell’s ACE2 receptor as a lock, then what we are doing with the nanodecoys is overwhelming the virus with fake locks so that it cannot find the ones that let it enter lung cells,” says Ke Cheng, corresponding author of the research....

Integrated circuits, which are in everything from coffeemakers to computers and are patterned from perfectly crystalline silicon, are quite thin — but Cornell researchers think they can push thin-film boundaries to the single-atom level. Their materials of choice are graphene, single-atom-thick sheets of repeating carbon atoms, and hexagonal boron nitride, similarly thin sheets of repeating boron and nitrogen atoms. Researchers led by Jiwoong Park, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, have invented a way to pattern single-atom films of graphene and boron nitride, an insulator, without the use of a silicon substrate....