Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Earth (only 4.28 light-years away) is getting a lot of attention these days. It hosts a planet, Proxima Cen b, whose mass is about 1.3 Earth-mass (though it could be larger, depending on the angle at which we are viewing it). Moreover, Proxima Cen b orbits the star in its habitable zone. Proxima Cen itself is an M-dwarf star with a mass only about one-tenth the Sun’s mass and a luminosity about one-thousandths of the Sun’s; because the star is dim, the planet’s habitable zone is twenty times closer to the star than the Earth’s is to the Sun, and the planet orbits in 11....

Black holes absorb light and all other forms of radiation, making them impossible to detect directly. But the effects of black holes, in particular accretion disks where matter is shredded and superheated as it spirals down into the black hole, can release enormous amounts of energy. The accretion disks around supermassive black holes (black holes with masses millions of times that of the Sun) are some of the brightest objects in the Universe....

At the centers of all massive galaxies are black holes weighing as much as several billion times the mass of our sun. It has been known for long that some of these massive black holes eject spectacular plasma jets at a near speed of light that can extend far beyond the confines of their host galaxy. But how these jets form in the first place has been a long-standing mystery....

A team from IBM in Zürich has released images they captured of single molecules that are so detailed that the type of atomic bonds between their atoms can be discerned. The scientists published their findings in the journal Science. The same IBM team took the first ever single-molecule images in 2009 and most recently published the images of the pentacene, the molecule shaped like the Olympic rings. These new images will allow scientists to study the imperfections of graphene or plotting where electrons go during chemical reactions....

University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research Director and Consultant Infectious Diseases Physician at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital (RBWH) Professor David Paterson said the drugs proved highly effective when first used against the virus in test tubes. “We’re now ready to begin patient trials with the drugs, one of which is an HIV medication and the other an anti-malaria drug,” Professor Paterson said. “Prior to the clinical trials going ahead, the medications were given to some of the first patients in Australia infected with COVID-19, and all have completely recovered without any trace of the virus left in their system....

These natural-color images, acquired on August 15, 2020, with the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, show a late-summer phytoplankton bloom swirling in the Baltic Sea. The images feature part of a bloom located between Öland and Gotland, two islands off the coast of southeast Sweden. Note the dark, straight lines crossing the detailed image: these are ships cutting through the bloom. Confirmation of the type of phytoplankton within this bloom would require the analysis of water samples....

Site 1 sodium channel blockers such as tetrodotoxin and saxitoxin are small-molecule drugs with powerful local anesthetic properties. They provide pain relief without toxic effects on local nerves and muscles, and are an attractive alternative to opioids. But injected by themselves, they can easily float away, causing severe systemic toxicity. Encapsulating these drugs in safe delivery systems has been a challenge: Because they are extremely water soluble, they tend to exit into the surrounding water in the body....

The flexible Li-ion battery that can operate under extreme conditions — including cutting, submersion, and simulated ballistic impact — can now also add incombustible to its resume. Relying on flammable and combustible materials, current Li-ion batteries (LIBs) are susceptible to catastrophic fire and explosion incidents — most of which arrive without any discernable warning. Notably, Samsung Galaxy7 phones were banned from airlines because of this danger, and the Navy’s prohibition of e-cigarettes on ships and submarines is a direct response to the obvious need to reduce the flammability of the power source of choice for portable electronics, electric vehicles, and more....

While the need for renewable energy around the world is growing exponentially, Lithuanian and German researchers have come up with a novel solution for developing low-cost solar technology. Material, synthesized by Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), Lithuania scientists, which self-assemble to form a molecular-thick electrode layer, presents a facile way of realizing highly efficient perovskite single-junction and tandem solar cells. The license to produce the material has been purchased by a Japanese company....

Scientists have discovered that a sugar that occurs naturally in breast milk can double the likelihood of a HIV-negative baby acquiring the virus from an HIV-positive mother. The molecule is called 3′-sialyllactose (3′-SL) and it is found in varying concentrations in the milk of women. The scientists published their findings in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. However, not all milk sugars are problematic. More than five of the 150 complex sugars in breast milk seem to have a protective effect against HIV....

A research team from Yale, the American Museum of Natural History, the University of Brussels, and the University of Bonn announced the discovery on November 9 in the journal Nature Communications. Fossil soft tissue in dinosaur bones has been a controversial topic among researchers for quite some time. Hard tissues, such as bones, eggs, teeth, and enamel scales, are able to survive fossilization extremely well. Soft tissues, such as blood vessels, cells, and nerves — which are stored inside the hard tissue — are more delicate and thought to decay rapidly after death....

Looking for the next leap in thermoelectric technologies, researchers at Duke University and Michigan State University gained new fundamental insights into two magnesium-based materials (Mg3Sb2 and Mg3Bi2) that have the potential to significantly outperform traditional thermoelectric designs and would also be more environmentally friendly and less expensive to manufacture. Contrary to prevailing scientific wisdom regarding the use of heavy elements, the researchers showed that replacing atoms of heavier elements such as calcium and ytterbium with lighter magnesium atoms actually led to a threefold increase in the magnesium-based materials’ performance....

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft still has a few months to go before it completes its mission in September, but the veteran Saturn explorer reaches a new milestone today. Saturn’s solstice – that is, the longest day of summer in the northern hemisphere and the shortest day of winter in the southern hemisphere – arrives today for the planet and its moons. The Saturnian solstice occurs about every 15 Earth years as the planet and its entourage slowly orbit the sun, with the north and south hemispheres alternating their roles as the summer and winter poles....

The findings, to be published today (January 13) in the peer-reviewed journal Cell Stem Cell, may assist in the development of new drugs that can manipulate this process to slow or stop cancer from growing and spreading, and enable regeneration in the context of other diseases. Ophir Klein, MD, PhD, executive director of Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s and the senior author of the study, said the findings underscore the body’s need to produce just the right amount of new cells....

A newly discovered galaxy cluster is the most massive one ever detected with an age of 800 million years or younger. Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have accurately determined the mass and other properties of this cluster. This is an important step in understanding how galaxy clusters, the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity, have evolved over time. A composite image shows the distant and massive galaxy cluster that is officially known as XDCP J0044....

As stars like the Sun run through their fuel, they cast off their outer layers and the core of the star shrinks. Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have found a bubble of ultra-hot gas at the center of one of these expiring stars, a planetary nebula in our galaxy called IC 4593. At a distance of about 7,800 light years from Earth, IC 4593 is the most distant planetary nebula yet detected with Chandra....

The search for potentially habitable planets involves discussion of what is sometimes referred to as the Goldilocks Zone – the relatively thin band in a solar system in which conditions on a planet can support life. Astrobiologists and planetary scientists agree that a planet’s distance from its parent star is of paramount importance for creating those optimum conditions – like Goldilocks’ porridge, it has to be just right. A new study by Arizona State University researchers suggests that the host star’s chemical makeup also can impact conditions of habitability of planets that orbit them....

Their discovery, published on October 17, 2019, in the journal Chem, gives drug makers a crucial building block for creating medicines that, so far, are made with complex processes that result in a lot of waste. This new finding may allow drug makers to create this building block in just one step, said David Nagib, the study’s senior author and assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Ohio State....

New representations of clouds are making models more sensitive to carbon dioxide. As scientists work to determine why some of the latest climate models suggest the future could be warmer than previously thought, a new study indicates the reason is likely related to challenges simulating the formation and evolution of clouds. The new research, published in Science Advances, gives an overview of 39 updated models that are part of a major international climate endeavor, the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6)....

Approximately one-fourth of children in the United States attend school in uniform, according to a Statista survey. Uniforms are required in one-fifth of public schools in the United States, with elementary and low-income schools having the highest prevalence. They are even more frequent at Catholic and other private schools in the United States and Canada. According to the research, which was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, millions of children in the United States and Canada are exposed to PFAS through their uniforms at levels that might be harmful....