The ocean is one of the largest dynamic carbon sinks in the world, and is susceptible to increased carbon emissions from human activities. There are even proposals to use the ocean to sequester carbon in an effort to reduce the carbon emissions. However, much of the processes by which the ocean functions as a carbon sink are not fully understood. Associate Professor Youhei Yamashita and grad student Yutaro Mori at Hokkaido University, along with Professor Hiroshi Ogawa at AORI, The University of Tokyo, have revealed conclusive evidence that hydrothermal vents are a previously unknown source of dissolved black carbon in the deep ocean....

How good is your Martian geography? Does Valles Marineris ring a bell? This area is known for having landslides that are among the largest and longest in the entire solar system. They make the perfect object of study due to their steep collapse close to the scarp, extreme thinning, and long front runout. In a new research paper published in EPJ Plus, Fabio De Blasio and colleagues from Milano-Bicocca University, Italy, explain the extent to which ice may have been an important medium of lubrication for landslides on Mars....

The rapid retreat of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica appears to be driven by processes under its floating ice shelf that are different than researchers realized. It is known as the “Doomsday Glacier” because of the potential threat it poses to global sea level rise. Two papers published in the journal Nature provide a clearer picture of the changes taking place under the glacier, which is the size of Florida and is one of the fastest-changing ice-ocean systems in Antarctica....

Champaign, Illinois — Looking at a smooth sheet of plastic in one University of Illinois laboratory, no one would guess that an impact had recently blasted a hole through it. Illinois researchers have developed materials. Until now, self-repairing materials could only bond tiny microscopic cracks. The new regenerating materials fill in large cracks and holes by regrowing material. Led by professor Scott White, the research team comprises professors Jeffry S....

Pressure related to global food demand may result in further expansion of Brazilian agriculture and deforestation, resulting in enhanced black carbon and CO2 emissions that may impact Andean glaciers.

For years, one of the only possible bright sides of increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) seen by scientists is enhanced photosynthesis. After all, plants use carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, so it was expected that higher levels of the greenhouse gas will lead to more productive plants. However, this effect may be less than expected because elevated levels of CO2 make it difficult for plants to obtain the minerals necessary to grow and provide nutritious food....

Investigations of deceased COVID-19 patients have shed light on possible lung damage caused by the virus. The study, published today (November 3, 2020) in The Lancet’s eBioMedicine, by King’s College London in collaboration with University of Trieste and the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biology in Italy, shows the unique characteristics to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and may explain why patients suffer from ‘long COVID’. Patients with COVID-19 can experience symptoms such as blood clotting and loss of smell and taste....

Imagine you sit down and pick up your favorite book. You look at the image on the front cover, run your fingers across the smooth book sleeve, and smell that familiar book smell as you flick through the pages. To you, the book is made up of a range of sensory appearances. But you also expect the book has its own independent existence behind those appearances. So when you put the book down on the coffee table and walk into the kitchen, or leave your house to go to work, you expect the book still looks, feels, and smells just as it did when you were holding it....

Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) NIRISS Components Cameras capture two-dimensional images of regions of space. Spectrographs spread light out into a spectrum so that the brightness of each individual wavelength can be measured. Webb’s aperture mask is a metal plate with seven hexagonal holes that is placed in front of the detectors to increase the effective resolution of the telescope and capture more detailed images of extremely bright objects. NIRISS Wavelength Range NIRISS is designed to capture light ranging in wavelength from 0....

“Our innovation can have a dual impact in the fight against antibiotic resistance. The material has been shown to be effective against many different types of bacteria, including those that are resistant to antibiotics, such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), while also having the potential to prevent infections and thus reduce the need for antibiotics,” says Martin Andersson, head of research for the study and professor at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Chalmers....

Chinese researchers have improved the accuracy in detecting space junk in earth’s orbit, providing a more effective way to plot safe routes for spacecraft maneuvers. “The possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to one!” exclaimed C-3PO as Han Solo directed the Millennium Falcon into an asteroid field in “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.” Earth’s orbit is nowhere near as dangerous, but after more than half a century of space activity, collisions between jettisoned engines and disintegrated spacecraft have formed a planetary scrap heap that spacecraft need to evade....

The latest two full-frame images of Pluto and Charon were collected separately by New Horizons during approach on July 13 and July 14, 2015. The relative reflectivity, size, separation, and orientations of Pluto and Charon are approximated in this composite image, and they are shown in approximate true color.

Fish with a leptocephalus larva stage include eels like the conger, moray eel, and garden eel. The conger eel is the one whose larva was captured by the Mie Prefecture Fisheries Research Institute in Japan. Leptocephali have laterally compressed bodies that contain jelly-like substances on the inside, with a thin layer of muscle with visible myomeres on the outside. They have a simple tube as a gut. They have dorsal and anal fins, but they lack pelvic fins....

The experiment shows that natural language processing, initially created for reading and writing language text, can grasp certain fundamental concepts of biology. The AI program, known as ProGen, was developed by Salesforce Research and employs next-token prediction to construct artificial proteins from amino acid sequences. Scientists said the new technology could become more powerful than directed evolution, the Nobel-prize-winning protein design technology, and it will energize the 50-year-old field of protein engineering by speeding the development of new proteins that can be used for almost anything from therapeutics to degrading plastic....

During this period, known as the middle Miocene Climate Optimum, global temperatures were as much as 3 to 4 degrees warmer than today’s average temperatures, similar to estimates for 2100. The position of the continents were similar to today and the seas were flourishing with life. This period, which occurred between 15 and 17 million years ago, has puzzled geologists for decades as they have tried to explain the initial cause of global warming and the environmental conditions that existed on Earth afterward....

A novel technique for studying vortices in quantum fluids has been developed by Lancaster physicists. Andrew Guthrie, Sergey Kafanov, Theo Noble, Yuri Pashkin, George Pickett and Viktor Tsepelin, in collaboration with scientists from Moscow State University, used tiny mechanical resonators to detect individual quantum vortices in superfluid helium. Their work is published in the current volume of Nature Communications. This research into quantum turbulence is simpler than turbulence in the real world, which is observed in everyday phenomena such as surf, fast-flowing rivers, billowing storm clouds, or chimney smoke....

Massive gas giants called “hot Jupiters” — planets that orbit too close to their stars to sustain life — are some of the strangest worlds found beyond our solar system. New observations show that the hottest of them all is stranger still, prone to planetwide meltdowns so severe they tear apart the molecules that make up its atmosphere. Called KELT-9b, the planet is an ultra-hot Jupiter, one of several varieties of exoplanets — planets around other stars — found in our galaxy....

Sequencing DNA is nothing new, but it’s much harder to sequence the DNA of a single cell. In order to get enough DNA for sequencing, usually thousands or millions of cells are required. Finding out which mutations are in which cells is extremely difficult, making the mutations present in only a few cells, like early cancerous cells, almost impossible to detect. The scientists published their findings in the journal Science¹....

Massive explosions of energy happening thousands of light-years from Earth may have left traces in our planet’s biology and geology, according to new research by University of Colorado at Boulder geoscientist Robert Brakenridge. The study, published this month in the International Journal of Astrobiology, probes the impacts of supernovas, some of the most violent events in the known universe. In the span of just a few months, a single one of these eruptions can release as much energy as the sun will during its entire lifetime....

Atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at Mauna Loa Observatory reached a seasonal peak of 417.1 parts per million for 2020 in May, the highest monthly reading ever recorded, scientists from NOAA and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego announced on June 4, 2020. This year’s peak value was 2.4 parts per million (ppm) higher than the 2019 peak of 414.7 ppm recorded in May 2019. NOAA scientists reported a May average of 417....