“While statins have been shown to reduce the risk of stroke from blood clots, there has been conflicting research on whether statin use increases or decreases the risk of a person having a first intracerebral hemorrhage,” said study author David Gaist, MD, Ph.D., of the University of Southern Denmark in Odense and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. “For our study, we looked at the lobe and non-lobe areas of the brain to see if the location was a factor for statin use and the risk of a first intracerebral hemorrhage....

With nutrients in short supply, phytoplankton, the microscopic plants that form the basis of the marine food chain, struggle to thrive. However, some phytoplankton do live within the hostile environment of these gyres, and exactly how they obtain their nutrients has long been a mystery. Now research by Edward Doddridge, a postdoc in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, has found that phytoplankton growth in subtropical gyres is affected by a layer of water well below the ocean surface, which allows nutrients to be recycled back to the surface....

Hubble astronomers have looked at one of the most distant and brightest quasars in the universe and are surprised by what they did not see: the underlying host galaxy of stars feeding the quasar. The best explanation is that the galaxy is shrouded in so much dust that the stars are completely hidden everywhere. Astronomers believe that the James Webb Space Telescope will reveal the galaxy. All but the very first galaxies contain some dust—the early universe was dust-free until the first generation of stars started making dust through nuclear fusion....

Tiny photosynthetic organisms that live virtually everywhere on earth, cyanobacteria helped to create an oxygen-rich atmosphere on earth and continue to provide us with much of the oxygen that we need to survive. “When cyanobacteria live in low-light conditions, such as beneath a pond surface or under the leaf litter on a forest floor, some are able to switch from using the visible light that is most conducive to their growth and photosynthetic activities to harvesting the weaker, far-red sunlight that filters down to them,” said Donald Bryant, Ernest C....

University of California, Riverside, scientists have moved a step closer to finding a use for the hundreds of millions of tons of plastic waste produced every year that often winds up clogging streams and rivers and polluting our oceans. In a recent study, Kandis Leslie Abdul-Aziz, a UCR assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering, and her colleagues detailed a method to convert plastic waste into a highly porous form of charcoal or char that has a whopping surface area of about 400 square meters per gram of mass....

The rover’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, provided the panorama. Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates Mastcam. A division of Caltech, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built the Curiosity rover and manages the Curiosity rover for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. 360° View: Use the arrows in the top left, or click (or touch) and drag your cursor or mouse, to move the view up/down and right/left....

When a carbon atom forms four bonds to different groups, the molecule can exist in two mirror-image forms. These mirror-image forms are vital in medicine because they have different biological activities. Usually, it is impossible to interconvert between these ‘enantiomers’ because to do so would require a bond to be broken, a process that needs too much energy. The researchers from Durham University and the University of York demonstrated that if the chiral center was part of a dynamic molecular cage structure, then a simple rearrangement of the cage could lead to the inversion of the mirror image form of the molecule....

One third (35%) of people who took a new drug for treating obesity lost more than one-fifth (greater than or equal to 20%) of their total body weight, according to a major global study involving UCL researchers. The findings from the large-scale international trial, published on February 10, 2021, in the New England Journal for Medicine, are being hailed as a “gamechanger” for improving the health of people with obesity and could play a major part in helping the UK to reduce the impact of diseases, such as COVID-19....

Super-small particles of silicon react with water to produce hydrogen almost instantaneously, according to University at Buffalo researchers. In a series of experiments, the scientists created spherical silicon particles about 10 nanometers in diameter. When combined with water, these particles reacted to form silicic acid (a nontoxic byproduct) and hydrogen — a potential source of energy for fuel cells. The reaction didn’t require any light, heat or electricity, and also created hydrogen about 150 times faster than similar reactions using silicon particles 100 nanometers wide, and 1,000 times faster than bulk silicon, according to the study....

Understanding the molecular differences that make the human brain distinct can help scientists investigate disruptions in its development. A new study investigates the differences and similarities of cells in the prefrontal cortex — the frontmost region of the brain, an area that plays a central role in higher cognitive functions — between humans and non-human primates such as chimpanzees, Rhesus macaques, and marmosets. Published recently in the journal Science, the study was conducted by a team of researchers including University of Wisconsin–Madison neuroscience professor Andre Sousa....

How does the brain chemical dopamine relate to schizophrenia? It is a question that vexed scientists for more than 70 years, and now researchers at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development (LIBD) believe they have solved the challenging riddle. This new understanding may lead to better treatment of schizophrenia, an often-devastating brain disorder characterized by delusional thinking, hallucinations, and other forms of psychosis. Through their exploration of the expression of genes in the caudate nucleus – a region of the brain linked to emotional decision-making – the scientists uncovered physical evidence that neuronal cells are unable to precisely control levels of dopamine....

In a year that has already battered manufacturing supply chains, yet another shortage is complicating manufacturers’ and consumers’ lives: plastics, and the food packaging, automotive components, clothing, medical and lab equipment and countless other items that rely on them. But a new chemical catalyst developed at the University of Michigan could enable the production of more of the feedstock for the world’s second-most widely used plastic. The feedstock, propylene, is used to make the plastic polypropylene—8 million tons of it each year....

This uniquely contemporary 81 m-long (266 ft-long) three-masted schooner was recently transported by barge from the company’s shipyard in Vollenhove to Royal Huisman Amsterdam, where its carbon composite rig will be installed, leaving her ready for sea trials and on-board crew training. Sea Eagle II’s modern style extends to its design, which took place using concurrent engineering, taking inspiration from the long-established Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) at ESA’s technical center ESTEC in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, where it is employed for performing preliminary design and assessment of potential future space missions and systems....

FINDINGS: Imagine how much you could save on your electricity bill if you could use the excess heat your computer generates to actually power the machine. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have taken an important step toward harnessing that heat and converting it for practical use. The advance could lead to more energy-efficient appliances and information processing devices....

In a new study led by The University of Texas at Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium in collaboration with Northwestern University, researchers describe the system that has guided COVID-19 policies in Austin, Texas, for more than a year, helping to safeguard the health care system and avoid costly measures. It tracks the number of new daily COVID-19 hospital admissions and triggers changes in guidance when admissions cross specific threshold values. While using this staged alert system, the Austin metropolitan area has sustained the lowest per capita COVID-19 death rate among all large Texas cities....

In a laboratory experiment that mimics astrophysical conditions, with cryogenic temperatures in an ultrahigh vacuum, scientists used an electron gun to irradiate thin sheets of ice covered in basic molecules of methane, ammonia and carbon dioxide. These simple molecules are ingredients for the building blocks of life. The experiment tested how the combination of electrons and basic matter leads to more complex biomolecule forms — and perhaps eventually to life forms....

“This is one of the most tangible pieces of evidence yet for the idea that explosive volcanism was more common on early Mars,” said Christopher Kremer, a graduate student at Brown University who led the work. “Understanding how important explosive volcanism was on early Mars is ultimately important for understand the water budget in Martian magma, groundwater abundance and the thickness of the atmosphere.” Volcanic explosions happen when gases like water vapor are dissolved in underground magma....

Very young stars host gaseous nebulae and protoplanetary disks where planetary systems form. The lifetimes of these disks place important constraints on the timescale of the planet formation, including the final sizes and eccentricities of the rocky terrestrial planets, and so it is a key parameter in the models. Observations of nearby young stellar objects suggest the timescales are typically short, under five million years, but such brief times are surprising because they would require very efficient mechanism(s) to transport material and disperse the disk....

Up to 80% of the Universe could be dark matter, but despite many decades of study, its physical origin has remained an enigma. While it cannot be seen directly, scientists know it exists because of its interaction via gravity with visible matter like stars and planets. Dark matter is composed of particles that do not absorb, reflect or emit light. Now, nuclear physicists at the University of York are putting forward a new candidate for the mysterious matter — a particle they recently discovered called the d-star hexaquark....

While it is widely accepted that climate change drove the evolution of our species in Africa, the exact character of that climate change and its impacts are not well understood. Glacial-interglacial cycles strongly impact patterns of climate change in many parts of the world, and were also assumed to regulate environmental changes in Africa during the critical period of human evolution over the last ~1 million years. The ecosystem changes driven by these glacial cycles are thought to have stimulated the evolution and dispersal of early humans....