This breakthrough has been carried out by the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) collaboration, which includes many UK scientists, as well as Professor Moses Chung and his research team in the School of Natural Sciences at UNIST. Their findings have been published in the online version of Nature on February 5, 2020. “We have succeeded in realizing muon ionization cooling, one of our greatest challenges associated with developing muon accelerators,” says Professor Chung....

In a new study published in Communications Biology on December 20, 2019, a group of scientists at Tokyo University of Science, led by Prof Sachihiro Matsunaga, wanted to find answers related to the origin of mitochondrial division. For their research, Prof Matsunaga and his team chose to study a type of red alga—the simplest form of a eukaryote, containing only one mitochondrion. Specifically, they wanted to observe whether the machinery involved in mitochondrial replication is conserved across different species and, if so, why....

In a new study published in the journal EPJ Plus by researchers from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, Gerard McCaul and his team demonstrate that atoms, one of the most basic building blocks of matter, can act as a reservoir for computing where all input-output processing is optical. “We had the idea that the capacity for computation is a universal property that all physical systems share, but within that paradigm, there is a great profusion of frameworks for how one would go about actually trying to perform computations,” McCaul says....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Invertebrate Biology. 17 years ago, researchers at the Center of Oceanology at France’s Aix-Marseille University provided the first evidence of a species of deep-sea sponge living in a Mediterranean cave, at a shallow depth. It snared prey, like small fish and crustaceans, instead of absorbing bacteria and organic particles through their bodies, as most other sea sponges do. This sponge was part of the Asbestopluma genus, and belonged to the Cladorhizidae family of carnivorous demosponges, a class that contains over 90% of the world’s sponges....

Saturn’s tiny moon Pan, about 17 miles (28 kilometers) across, orbits within the Encke Gap in the A ring. Beyond, we can see the arc of Saturn itself, its cloud tops streaked with dark shadows cast by the rings. This image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on February 12, 2016, at a distance of approximately 746,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Pan. The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission on September 15, 2017....

NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft will begin a series of three close encounters with Saturn’s moon Enceladus starting Wednesday, October 14. New images are expected to begin arriving one to two days after the flyby, providing the first opportunity for a close-up look at the north polar region of Enceladus. Wednesday’s flyby is considered a moderately close approach for Cassini, which will pass at an altitude of 1,142 miles (1,839 kilometers) above the moon’s surface....

“The rapid rise and geographic spread of cases is concerning and emphasizes the need for continued surveillance, expanded lab capacity, quicker diagnostic tests, and adherence to proven infection prevention and control,” said CDC epidemiologist Dr. Meghan Lyman, lead author of the paper. As further explained in the article, C. auris has spread in the United States since it was first reported in 2016, with a total of 3,270 clinical cases (in which infection is present) and 7,413 screening cases (in which the fungus is detected but not causing infection) reported through December 31, 2021....

“People who study polymer physics have suggested that knots might be able to jam, but there haven’t been good model systems to test it,” says Patrick Doyle, the Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering and the senior author of the study. “We showed the same knot could go from being jammed to being mobile along the same molecule. You change conditions and it suddenly stops, and then change them again and it suddenly moves....

Lithium metal is considered the best option as a material for anodes in high-energy batteries, the researchers said, because of the metal’s high potential for providing large amounts of energy and capacity in a given mass. Yet existing lithium metal electrodes, limited by low capacity and utilization efficiency, have not come close to reaching that potential. In a new study on May 14 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by Yale’s Hailiang Wang describes a new approach to creating more efficient lithium metal electrodes....

Research from the Buck Institute and Stanford University suggests that chronic viral infections have a profound and lasting impact on the human immune system in ways that are similar to those seen during aging. Results are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Using systems immunology and artificial intelligence, researchers profiled and compared immune responses in a cohort of aging individuals, people with HIV on long-term anti-retroviral therapy, and people infected with hepatitis C (HCV) before and after the virus was treated with a drug that has up to a 97% cure rate....

Exposure to the rhinovirus, the most frequent cause of the common cold, can protect against infection by the virus which causes COVID-19, Yale researchers have found. In a new study, the researchers found that the common respiratory virus jump-starts the activity of interferon-stimulated genes, early-response molecules in the immune system which can halt replication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus within airway tissues infected with the cold. Triggering these defenses early in the course of COVID-19 infection holds promise to prevent or treat the infection, said Ellen Foxman, assistant professor of laboratory medicine and immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the study....

Plain-looking but inherently strange crystalline materials called 3D topological insulators (TIs) are all the rage in materials science. Even at room temperature, a single chunk of TI is a good insulator in the bulk, yet behaves like a metal on its surface. Researchers find TIs exciting partly because the electrons that flow swiftly across their surfaces are “spin polarized”: the electron’s spin is locked to its momentum, perpendicular to the direction of travel....

The ninth annual Golden Goose Award ceremony on December 1, 2020 will recognize three teams of scientists whose research has greatly benefited society. Led by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the award committee includes a bipartisan group of Congressional supporters and several science and higher education organizations. For its 2020 recipients, the Golden Goose Award highlights outstanding examples of researchers whose federally funded research is informing scientific responses to COVID-19, including the development of vaccines and treatments that have the potential to help tackle the global pandemic....

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania performed whole-genome sequencing of a house cat infected with coronavirus last year. The sequence, the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, was nearly identical to those circulating in humans at the time. Since being identified in people in 2019, SARS-CoV-2 has gone on to infect a wide range of animal species, wild and domestic. Concerns abound that these species jumps could lead to novel mutations and even harmful new variants....

In a paper published in the journal of Ocular Immunology and Inflammation, physicians from the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine reported that several patients using germicidal lamps in an attempt to sanitize against the coronavirus, developed painful inflammation of the cornea, a condition called photokeratitis. These consumer-available ultraviolet (UV) emitting devices were being used in an attempt to eliminate coronavirus from homes and offices....

Professor Warwick Bowen, from UQ’s Precision Sensing Initiative and the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems said the finding was “a significant advance” and provided a new way to study turbulence. “Turbulence is often described as the oldest unsolved problem in physics,” Professor Bowen said. “Our finding allows us to observe nanoscale quantum turbulence, which mirrors the sort of behavior you see in cyclones. “This advance is enabled by the properties of quantum liquids, which are fundamentally different to everyday liquids....

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has provided researchers with the first orbital analysis of the giant asteroid Vesta, yielding new insights into its creation and kinship with terrestrial planets and Earth’s moon. Vesta now has been revealed as a special fossil of the early solar system with a more varied, diverse surface than originally thought. Scientists have confirmed a variety of ways in which Vesta more closely resembles a small planet or Earth’s moon than another asteroid....

Guinea worm disease is usually caught by drinking water containing water fleas that carry the parasite larvae. The worms mate and grow inside the body, and after 10-14 months the one-meter-long adult worm emerges, usually from the arms or legs, to shed its larvae back into water. The parasite causes disability and trauma in some of the world’s poorest communities in Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, and South Sudan. Eradication programs have cut human cases of Guinea worm from millions a year in the 1980s to just 27 in 2020....

Flossing your teeth is one thing you can do to protect your oral health. It’s one of those tasks people are supposed to do but often don’t. But why is it important? Flossing removes food particles and plaque from between the teeth and below the gum line where a toothbrush can’t reach. Eradicating the stuff your toothbrush can’t reach can save you expensive dental bills later. Flossing may help prevent cavities, periodontal disease, and even gingivitis — all of which can lead to other health issues down the road if you let them fester....

While sifting through fossil soils in the Catskill region near Cairo, N.Y., researchers uncovered the extensive root system of 385-million-year-old trees that existed during the Devonian Period. While seed plants didn’t appear until some 10 million years later, these preserved root systems show evidence of the presence of trees with leaves and wood—both of which are common in modern seed plants. The finding, published today (December 19, 2019) in Current Biology, is the first piece of evidence that the transition toward modern forests began earlier than previously believed....