Billions of lightyears away, gigantic clouds of hydrogen gas produce a special kind of radiation, a type of ultraviolet light known as Lyman-alpha emissions. The enormous clouds emitting the light are Lyman-alpha blobs (LABs). LABs are several times larger than our Milky Way galaxy, yet were only discovered 20 years ago. An extremely powerful energy source is necessary to produce this radiation—think the energy output equivalent of billions of our sun—but scientists debate what that energy source could be....

However, a crucial past relationship between summer sea ice in the Arctic and permafrost, discovered in this study, is now understood, with significant implications for the future. Professor Gideon Henderson, an author of the study based at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, said: ‘We were surprised to find that times when permafrost melted in the past did not simply match up with times when the Earth was at its warmest, but were much more likely when the Arctic was free of ice in the summer....

New research findings help clarify mixed results from previous studies. Results from the largest clinical trial of its kind do not support the use of fish oil supplements—a source of omega-3 fatty acid—to help prevent depression. The findings are published in JAMA by a team led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). Experts have recommended omega-3 supplements for reducing the recurrence of depression in some high-risk patients, but there are no guidelines related to the use of these supplements for preventing depression in the general population....

The landscape is mostly arid and includes flat alluvial terrain that is drained by the Georgina, Thomson, Diamantina and Barcoo rivers. This desert region usually becomes lush with greenery after periods of flooding, and the land is used for cattle grazing. In late March 2019, tropical cyclone Trevor hit northwest Queensland and produced heavy rain as it moved inland. According to the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology, major flood levels were recorded across the Channel Country catchments....

“Previously it was believed these tones were too faint to be detected, yet now we are able to,” says study co-author Will Farr. “Just like the measurement of atomic spectra in the late 1800s opened the era of stellar astrophysics and classifying and understanding stars, this is the opening of the era of black hole spectra and understanding black holes and the general relativity that sits behind them.” Farr is an associate professor at Stony Brook University in New York and the group leader for gravitational wave astronomy at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City....

A chemical reaction sometimes occurs in an odd way, since in microscopic view the progress of a reaction is governed by the quantum theory. New research by scientists at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has shown, surprisingly, in the simplest, well-studied reaction, there is still an uncovered mechanism. It leads to clear quantum interference and verifies again that Nature does “play dice....

Reference: “Proof of Concept for Real-Time Detection of SARS CoV-2 Infection with an Electronic Nose” by Kobi Snitz, Michal Andelman-Gur, Liron Pinchover, Reut Weissgross, Aharon Weissbrod, Eva Mishor, Roni Zoller, Vera Linetsky, Abebe Medhanie, Sagit Shushan, Eli Jaffe and Noam Sobel, 2 June 2021, PLOS ONE.DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0252121 Funding: This study was supported by pilot grants from MAFAT: The Israeli Ministry of Defense Directorate of Defense Research and Development, and from Sonia T....

More sophisticated wound dressings that can monitor aspects of healing such as pH and temperature and deliver therapies to a wound site have been developed in recent years, but they are complex to manufacture, expensive, and difficult to customize, limiting their potential for widespread use. Now, a new, scalable approach to speeding up wound healing has been developed based on heat-responsive hydrogels that are mechanically active, stretchy, tough, highly adhesive, and antimicrobial: active adhesive dressings (AADs)....

The watery creation could lead to soft robots that mimic sea animals like the octopus, which can walk underwater and bump into things without damaging them. It may also lead to artificial hearts, stomachs, and other muscles, along with devices for diagnosing diseases, detecting and delivering drugs, and performing underwater inspections. Soft materials like the smart gel are flexible, often cheaper to manufacture than hard materials, and can be miniaturized....

A simple 19th Century tool is still useful to ocean scientists in the age of satellites, new research published in Frontiers in Marine Science shows. A Secchi disk – historically called a “dinner plate” by sailors – is used in the open ocean to measure concentrations of microscopic algae called phytoplankton. It works by lowering the white disk into the water and recording the depth at which it disappears. In the new study, a research team including the University of Exeter, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Vrije Universiteit (Netherlands) and the Italian Institute of Marine Sciences (ISMAR) compared the performance of Secchi disks with satellites and high-performance chromatography....

In the July 6 issue of Cell Stem Cell, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine describe how human epidermal progenitor cells and stem cells control transcription factors to avoid premature differentiation, preserving their ability to produce new skin cells throughout life. The findings provide new insights into the role and importance of exosomes and their targeted gene transcripts, and may help point the way to new drugs or therapies for not just skin diseases, but other disorders in which stem and progenitor cell populations are affected....

UK and US populations lack awareness of “nuclear winter,” the potential for catastrophic long-term environmental consequences from any exchange of nuclear warheads. This is according to the researcher behind new polling conducted last month and released on February 13 by the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER). Paul Ingram, CSER senior research associate, says that – despite risks of a nuclear exchange being at their highest for 40 years due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – what little awareness there is of nuclear winter among the public is mainly residual from the Cold War era....

The Republic of Maldives consists of a chain of around 1200 small coral islands that are grouped into clusters of atolls – scattered across 90,000 sq km of ocean. A number of these little islands can be seen in the image, with the turquoise colors depicting clear, shallow waters dotted by coral reefs which contrasts with the dark colors of the Indian Ocean. Malé, located at the southern edge of the North Malé Atoll, can be easily spotted in the right of the image....

Smallpox spread from person to person via infectious droplets, killed around a third of sufferers and left another third permanently scarred or blind. Around 300 million people died from it in the 20th century alone before it was officially eradicated in 1980 through a global vaccination effort — the first human disease to be wiped out. Now an international team of scientists have sequenced the genomes of newly discovered strains of the virus after it was extracted from the teeth of Viking skeletons from sites across northern Europe....

The newest addition to ESO’s La Silla observatory in northern Chile, Exoplanets in Transits and their Atmospheres (ExTrA), has made its first successful observations. ExTrA is designed to search for planets around nearby red dwarf stars and study their properties. ExTrA is a French project funded by the European Research Council and the French Agence National de la Recherche. The telescopes will be operated remotely from Grenoble, France. To detect and study exoplanets, ExTrA uses three 0....

More than 99.9% of seasonal coronaviruses present in airborne droplets were killed when exposed to a particular wavelength of ultraviolet light that is safe to use around humans, a new study at Columbia University Irving Medical Center has found. “Based on our results, continuous airborne disinfection with far-UVC light at the current regulatory limit could greatly reduce the level of airborne virus in indoor environments occupied by people,” says the study’s lead author David Brenner, PhD, Higgins Professor of Radiation Biophysics at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Irving Medical Center....

The Mechanical Ventilator Milano, or MVM, is the brainchild of physicist Cristiano Galbiati. The Gran Sasso Science Institute and Princeton University professor, who normally leads a dark matter experiment in Italy called DarkSide-20k, found himself in lockdown in Milan, a city hit hard by COVID-19. Hearing reports of ventilator shortages and wanting to help, Galbiati reached out to fellow researchers to develop a ventilator with minimal components that could be quickly produced using commonly available parts....

Jose M. Adrover, a postdoctoral fellow in CSHL Professor Mikala Egeblad’s lab, explains that NETs are usually released during infections when immune cells, called neutrophils, confront a threat that is too large for the tiny cells to battle directly. To extend their reach, neutrophils spew a sticky web of DNA and toxins, which indiscriminately poisons pathogens and the body’s own cells. “They will damage everything, all around,” Adrover says. Because NETs can be so destructive, researchers in Egeblad’s lab have been searching for ways to block their formation....

“Stars create most of the light we see and synthesize most of the universe’s heavy elements, like silicon and iron,” said lead scientist Marco Ajello, an astrophysicist at Clemson University in South Carolina. “Understanding how the cosmos we live in came to be depends in large part on understanding how stars evolved.” Gamma rays from distant galaxies called blazars interact with starlight as they travel across the universe. As shown in this video, those reaching the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope can help scientists learn about the history of star formation throughout the cosmos....

Here’s your chance to participate in NASA’s return to the Moon with the Artemis program! NASA is inviting people to submit their names to be included on a flash drive that will be sent along with Artemis I, an uncrewed test flight that kicks off the space agency’s plans to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon. The flight, which is not yet officially scheduled, should take place in the coming next few months, perhaps late May, June, or July 2022....