Scientists have thought that global warming will increase the availability of surface water — freshwater resources generated by precipitation minus evapotranspiration — in wet regions, and decrease water availability in dry regions. This expectation is based primarily on atmospheric thermodynamic processes. As air temperatures rise, more water evaporates into the air from the ocean and land. Because warmer air can hold more water vapor than dry air, a more humid atmosphere is expected to amplify the existing pattern of water availability, causing the “dry-get-drier, and wet-get-wetter” atmospheric responses to global warming....

Protein assemblies, designed and built from scratch to carry molecular cargo, are advancing both synthetic life research and engineering efforts for targeted drug delivery. Scientists have succeeded in developing the first reported synthetic protein assemblies that encapsulate their own genetic materials and evolve new traits in complex environments. The project is reported this week in the scientific journal, Nature. The lead authors of the paper are Gabriel L. Butterfield and Marc J....

Ever since graphene’s discovery in 2004, scientists have looked for ways to put this talented, atomically thin 2D material to work. Thinner than a single strand of DNA yet 200 times stronger than steel, graphene is an excellent conductor of electricity and heat, and it can conform to any number of shapes, from an ultrathin 2D sheet, to an electronic circuit. Last year, a team of researchers led by Feng Wang, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and a professor of physics at UC Berkeley, developed a multitasking graphene device that switches from a superconductor that efficiently conducts electricity, to an insulator that resists the flow of electric current, and back again to a superconductor....

Inducing cells to express telomerase, the enzyme which is supposed to slow down the metabolic clock, has enabled researchers boost the lifespan of mouse by 24% with a single treatment. The scientists published their findings in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine. The gene therapy acts on specific genes and is applied in adult life, not from the embryonic stage. Researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) have demonstrated that the mouse lifespan can be extended by the application of one treatment acting directly on the animal’s genes in adult life....

Two other worlds orbit the same star. While all three planets’ sizes are known, further study with other telescopes will be needed to determine if they have atmospheres and, if so, which gases are present. The L 98-59 worlds nearly double the number of small exoplanets — that is, planets beyond our solar system — that have the best potential for this kind of follow-up. “The discovery is a great engineering and scientific accomplishment for TESS,” said Veselin Kostov, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California....

Narlikar first describes cosmological research in the 60s and 70s and explains how it covered key areas, including the Wheeler-Feynman theory relating the local electromagnetic arrow of time to the cosmological one, singularity in quantum cosmology and the observational tests of discrete source populations in different models of the expanding universe. In the subsequent tests to validate theories, one key discovery — cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) — in the mid-sixties changed physicists’ perspective of the big bang....

Survey results, published in Tobacco Control, show that less than five percent of the 3,500 adult e-cig users who responded to the survey quit using e-cigs in response to the flavored e-cig ban. The rest of the respondents switched to other forms or flavors of e-cigs not covered by the ban or other types of tobacco products. “An increasing body of literature shows that e-cig flavors themselves cause damage when inhaled, so it makes sense to ban flavors,” said Deborah J....

In the early days of the pandemic, amidst all the uncertainty, one thing was for sure: N95 masks – the personal protective respiratory devices that filter out viruses, bacteria, and wildfire smoke – were in short supply. So when materials scientists Jeff Urban and Peter Hosemann heard that a local HMO needed advice on N95 alternatives, they immediately knew what to do: Make a better mask. Hosemann got on the phone, and discovered that the HMO’s doctors and supply managers wanted to know what makes an effective antiviral mask, and how they could verify whether the masks they found were actually any good....

This proof-of-concept study was conducted to evaluate if trained sniffer dogs could distinguish between sweat samples from symptomatic COVID-19 positive individuals (SARS-CoV-2 PCR positive) and those from asymptomatic COVID-19 negative individuals. Two sites (Paris, France, and Beirut, Lebanon) conducted the testing, with each following the same training and testing protocols. A total of six sniffer dogs were involved in the testing: three explosive detection dogs, two colon cancer detection dogs, and one search and rescue dog....

A team of researchers from various universities and research centers led by Leibniz University Hannover launched the MAIUS-1 mission in January 2017. This has since become the first rocket mission on which a Bose-Einstein condensate has been generated in space. This special state of matter occurs when atoms – in this case atoms of rubidium – are cooled to a temperature close to absolute zero, or minus 273 degrees Celsius....

The novel sensor is based on the so-called “black silicon” that is fabricated by high-performing reactive etching of commercially available silicon substrates. Such etched silicon has a nanostructured spiky surface exhibiting unique optical properties. After etching, the surface is covered with a monolayer of carbazole molecules. This process is called chemical functionalization since the attached molecules impart the substrate a certain important function, namely, the ability to bind and concentrate nitroaromatic compounds on the surface....

Often, students come into Williams’ class, 6.006 (Introduction to Algorithms), wanting to dive into advanced programming that power the latest, greatest computing techniques. Her lessons instead focus on how algorithms are designed around core mathematical models and concepts. “When taking an algorithms class, many students expect to program a lot and perhaps use deep learning, but it’s very mathematical and has very little programming,” says Williams, the Steven G. (1968) and Renee Finn Career Development Professor who recently earned tenure in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science....

High-resolution images reveal new and unexpected structures within the Eta Carinae binary system, including in the area between the two stars where extremely high velocity stellar winds are colliding. These new insights into this enigmatic star system could lead to a better understanding of the evolution of very massive stars. Led by Gerd Weigelt from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, a team of astronomers have used the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory to take a unique image of the Eta Carinae star system in the Carina Nebula....

I am often asked how carbon dioxide can have an important effect on global climate when its concentration is so small – just 0.041% of Earth’s atmosphere. And human activities are responsible for just 32% of that amount. I study the importance of atmospheric gases for air pollution and climate change. The key to carbon dioxide’s strong influence on climate is its ability to absorb heat emitted from our planet’s surface, keeping it from escaping out to space....

Would you be more willing to get vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus if you could participate in a lottery for cash and prizes? The answer was surprisingly no, according to Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers who found that Ohio’s “Vax-a-Million” lottery-based incentive system, intended to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates, was not associated with an increase in COVD-19 vaccinations. Prior reports in the media had suggested that the Ohio lottery increased COVID-19 vaccinations, leading other states to use COVID-19 vaccine incentive lotteries in an attempt to increase slowing vaccination rates....

Could Earth-based microbes survive a trip to Mars? Yes! That’s why we made sure NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover met cleanliness requirements before leaving our home planet. Dr. Moogega Cooper from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is here to fill us in. Yes, it is possible for microorganisms to survive the journey from Earth to Mars. That’s why we have a program specifically dedicated to ensuring the spacecraft is as clean as possible before leaving Earth—if we ever detect life on Mars, we are certain that it did not come from our own planet....

One day, a wearable, bioelectronic device could wirelessly transmit a person’s vital signs — potentially providing critical information for early detection of health issues such as COVID-19 or heart disease — to a healthcare provider, eliminating the need for an in-person visit while also saving lives. The interest for wearable bioelectronics has grown in recent years, largely fueled by the growing demand for fitness trackers that can record workouts and monitor a person’s health — from heart rate to quality of sleep....

Born pink, blind, and helpless, giant pandas typically weigh about 100 grams at birth — the equivalent of a stick of butter. Their mothers are 900 times more massive than that. This unusual size difference has left researchers puzzled for years. With a few exceptions among animals such as echidnas and kangaroos, no other mammal newborns are so tiny relative to their mothers. No one knows why, but a new study of bones across 10 species of bears and other animals finds that some of the current theories don’t hold up....

A research team at the University of Cambridge set out to discover why and published their findings in The Journal of Cognition and Development. The team was led by James Russell from the Department of Psychology and tested children aged three and four. Nearly all the children felt that they were hidden when they were wearing an eye mask and most thought that an adult with a mask was hidden too....

In a far-off galaxy, 12.4 billion light-years from Earth, a ravenous black hole is devouring galactic grub. Its feeding frenzy produces so much energy, it stirs up gas across its entire galaxy. “It is like a pot of boiling water being heated up by a nuclear reactor in the center,” said Tanio Diaz-Santos of the Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, lead author of a new study about this galaxy....