An electricity-conducting, environment-sensing, shape-changing machine the size of a human cell? Is that even possible? Cornell physicists Paul McEuen and Itai Cohen not only say yes, but they’ve actually built the “muscle” for one. With postdoctoral researcher Marc Miskin at the helm, the team has made a robot exoskeleton that can rapidly change its shape upon sensing chemical or thermal changes in its environment. And, they claim, these microscale machines – equipped with electronic, photonic, and chemical payloads – could become a powerful platform for robotics at the size scale of biological microorganisms....

At a time when our earliest human ancestors mastered walking upright the heart of our Milky Way galaxy underwent a titanic eruption, driving gases and other material outward at 2 million miles per hour. Now, at least 2 million years later, astronomers are witnessing the aftermath of the explosion: billowing clouds of gas towering about 30,000 light-years above and below the plane of our galaxy. The enormous structure was discovered five years ago as a gamma-ray glow on the sky in the direction of the galactic center....

In “Time Kinetics of Viral Clearance and Resolution of Symptoms in Novel Coronavirus Infection,” Lixin Xie, MD, Lokesh Sharma, Ph.D., and co-authors report on a study of 16 patients with COVID-19, who were treated and released from the Treatment Center of PLA General Hospital in Beijing between January 28 and February 9, 2020. Patients studied had a median age of 35.5 years. Researchers collected samples from throat swabs taken from all patients on alternate days and analyzed them....

Prone positioning saves lives, but nerve pressure injuries impair arms and legs. Severely ill COVID-19 patients on ventilators are placed in a prone (face down) position because it’s easier for them to breathe and reduces mortality. But that life-saving position can also cause permanent nerve damage in these vulnerable patients, reports a newly accepted study from Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Scientists believe the nerve damage is the result of reduced blood flow and inflammation....

The study builds on the realization that in recent decades the widespread use of antibiotics to fight infections with disease-causing bacteria killed off species most vulnerable to available drugs, leaving in place more species that are resistant to antibiotics. Additionally, disruptions in gut bacterial ratios have previously been linked to more severe COVID-19. However, until now it has remained unclear which came first, according to researchers. Does the coronavirus infection disrupt the gut microbiome or is an already weakened gut making the body more vulnerable to the virus?...

Experts argue COVID passes could stop another lockdown or pose threats such as segregation and ongoing surveillance. COVID passes and vaccine passports may promise the ideal solution to avoiding further lockdowns in the UK or pose a threat to people’s freedoms and right to privacy, experts argue in a debate published by The BMJ today (November 3, 2021). Experts whose institutions have carried out research into the impact of using such tools to try and prevent the spread of the coronavirus have different opinions about whether or not they are a valid alternative to lockdown....

After imaging during the holidays, NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity resumed driving on January 3 and pulled within arm’s reach of a sinuous rock feature called “Snake River.” Snake River is a thin curving line of darker rock cutting through flatter rocks and jutting above sand. Curiosity’s science team plans to get a closer look at it before proceeding to other nearby rocks. “It’s one piece of the puzzle,” said the mission’s project scientist, John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena....

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is just over a month from its July 20 targeted launch date. The rover’s astrobiology mission will seek signs of past microscopic life on Mars, explore the geology of the Jezero Crater landing site, and demonstrate key technologies to help prepare for future robotic and human exploration. And the rover will do all that while collecting the first samples of Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) for return to Earth by a set of future missions....

Docking happens twice during sample collection. First, the robotic arm docks to drop off the currently-chucked abrading bit and pick up a coring bit with an empty sample tube. Then, after collecting a rock sample, it docks again to drop off the coring bit with a now-filled sample tube, which will be processed, sealed, and stored by the caching assembly. Docking works by guiding a set of small posts on the end of the robotic arm into a matching set of cones on the dock....

But a new thought experiment explores it more deeply, and while there’s no firm conclusion about humanity and a planetary mind, just thinking about it invites minds to reconsider their relationship with nature. Overcoming our challenges requires a better understanding of ourselves and nature, and the same is true for any other civilizations that make it past the Great Filter. Humanity is pretty proud of itself sometimes. We’ve built a more-or-less global civilization, we’ve wiped out deadly diseases, and we’ve traveled to the Moon....

A new multicenter European study that assessed the burden of itch on dermatological patients’ psychological wellbeing is reported in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. Itch is a very common symptom in patients suffering from skin diseases. In a new multicenter cross-sectional study on the psychological burden of itch in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, published by Elsevier, investigators report that the presence of itch in dermatological patients was significantly associated with clinical depression, suicidal ideation, and stress....

For people living with HIV, any level of alcohol consumption is associated with lower levels of a protein involved in bone formation, raising the risk of osteoporosis, according to a new study by researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and School of Medicine (BUSM) and published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. “We did not find an amount of alcohol consumption that appeared ‘safe’ for bone metabolism,” says study lead author Dr....

Using deep learning and artificial intelligence (AI), scientists from Florida Atlantic University’s Machine Perception and Cognitive Robotics Laboratory (MPCR) in the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences in FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science are bringing to life one of about a handful of these quadruped robots in the world. Astro is unique because he is the only one of these robots with a head, 3D printed to resemble a Doberman pinscher, that contains a (computerized) brain....

Mountaintop mining involves removing vast amounts of earth with explosives so that thin seams of coal can be excavated. Last year, the EPA vetoed a permit for one of the largest projects like this in West Virginia. The permit had been awarded by the US Army Corps of Engineers to Mingo Logan, a subsidiary of Arch Coal in 2007. The company is the second-largest coal producer in the USA and is based in St Louis, Missouri....

Some 520-540 million years ago, animal life evolved in the ocean and began breaking down organic material on the seafloor, leading to more carbon dioxide and less oxygen in the atmosphere. In the 100 million years that followed, conditions for these earliest animals became much harsher, as ocean oxygen levels fell and carbon dioxide caused global warming. The research, published in Nature Communications, is from the Universities of Exeter, Leeds and Antwerp, and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel....

The new finding involves the non-Abelian Aharonov-Bohm Effect and is published in the journal Science by MIT graduate student Yi Yang, MIT visiting scholar Chao Peng (a professor at Peking University), MIT graduate student Di Zhu, Professor Hrvoje Buljan at University of Zagreb in Croatia, Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics John Joannopoulos at MIT, Professor Bo Zhen at the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT professor of physics Marin Soljačić....

A new study in Frontiers in Public Health presents a review of expert opinions on the achievements and shortcomings of the European Union’s (EU) COVID-19 response. The aim: to draw lessons for future pandemics. In 2004, the EU created the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), precisely with the goal of coordinating cross-border disease surveillance and guidelines. However, the interviewed public health experts largely agreed that, although there were some successes, individual countries’ interests often superseded EU-wide responses....

The dinosaur in the movie is mostly imagination, but a new comprehensive analysis of Dilophosaurus fossils is helping to set the record straight. Far from the small lizard-like dinosaur in the movies, the actual Dilophosaurus was the largest land animal of its time, reaching up to 20 feet in length, and it had much in common with modern birds. The analysis was published open access today (July 7, 2020) in the Journal of Paleontology....

As part of the earth’s water cycle, water evaporates into vapor, resulting in plumes coming from a boiling kettle and bulging clouds. Evaporating liquid drops are also widely noticed, such as when morning dew evaporates from a spider’s web, and are important for technologies such as fuel-injection combustion engines and cutting-edge evaporative cooling systems for next-generation electronics. Researchers from the Mathematics Institute and School of Engineering at the University of Warwick have had the paper ‘Lifetime of a Nanodroplet: Kinetic Effects & Regime Transitions’; published in the journal Physical Review Letters on October 9, 2019, in which they explore the lifespan of a liquid droplet....

Canadian scientist Felix Pharand-Deschenes used satellite images to map the human influence on Earth, depicting how much it has changed, as seen from space. Pharand-Deschenes used data collected by various government agencies to create these striking images. The images show everything, from paved and unpaved roads, light pollution, railways, and electrical transmission lines, all the way to submarine cables, pipelines, shipping lanes, and air traffic. The images also highlight the disparity between the first and third world....