Scientists believe atmospheric oxygen developed in three stages, starting with what is known as the Great Oxidation Event around two billion years ago, when oxygen first appeared in the atmosphere. The third stage, around 400 million years ago, saw atmospheric oxygen rise to levels that exist today. What is uncertain is what happened during the second stage, in a time known as the Neoproterozoic Era, which started about one billion years ago and lasted for around 500 million years, during which time early forms of animal life emerged....

The benefits of cultured meat over traditional animal agriculture include a reduced carbon footprint and a lower chance of animal disease transmission. However, the current method of producing cultured meat needs the use of other animal products, which largely defeats the purpose, or drugs to stimulate the meat’s growth. Animal cells are given animal serum – typically fetal bovine serum (FBS), which is a combination obtained from the blood of fetuses excised from pregnant cows killed in the dairy or meat industries – to help them develop and proliferate in order to cultivate cell-based meat....

A young research team from the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology (Leibniz IPHT) in Jena, the Friedrich Schiller University and Jena University Hospital wants to change this: The researchers have developed an optical toolbox to build microscopes for a few hundred euros that deliver high-resolution images comparable to commercial microscopes that cost a hundred to a thousand times more. With open-source blueprints, components from the 3D printer and smartphone camera, the UC2 (You....

“Now we have a way to tell whether one type of cell has been communicating with another cell within a live mouse,” says Victora, an immunologist and head of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Dynamics. Until now, scientists were able to study such exchanges between cells only within the artificial environment of a petri dish. “Virtually all of immunology is based on cell-to-cell contact,” says Victora. “Most immune phenomena require that cells physically meet each other and exchange signals so that the response gets kick started....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Science. A single molecule has never been shown to be able to move something on a macroscopic scale, states Jose Ignacio Pascual, at the CIC nanoGUNE Consolider research center in San Sebastián, Spain, and lead author of the paper. If the molecule were the size of a person, it could be like moving something the size of Mount Everest, Pascual continues. The resonances between the hydrogen molecule’s own vibrations and the tuning fork’s natural vibration rate convert the randomness of the molecule’s position into regular oscillations in the cantilever, harvesting energy from noise....

Cycles of a diet that simulates fasting seem to lessen Alzheimer’s symptoms in mice genetically engineered to develop the disease, according to new research led by the University of Southern California (USC) Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. The study was recently published in the journal Cell Reports. The team, led by Professor Valter Longo and included Professors Christian Pike and Pinchas Cohen, discovered that mice that had undergone several cycles of the fasting-mimicking diet showed less Alzheimer’s pathology....

Astronomers have used the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, and other telescopes around the globe and in space to find and characterize a giant planet, less than 13.8 times as massive as Jupiter[1], orbiting a white dwarf star.[2][3] The research is published in the journal Nature. This is the first example of an intact giant planet orbiting close to a white dwarf star — in this case a particularly cool and dim stellar ember known as WD 1856+534....

Antibodies, small proteins produced by the immune system, can attach to specific parts of a virus to neutralize it. As scientists continue to battle SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, one possible weapon is a synthetic antibody that binds with the virus’ spike proteins to prevent the virus from entering a human cell. To develop a successful synthetic antibody, researchers must understand exactly how that attachment will happen. Proteins, with lumpy 3D structures containing many folds, can stick together in millions of combinations, so finding the right protein complex among almost countless candidates is extremely time-consuming....

The pace at which scientific data can be gathered is increasing rapidly, resulting in huge and very complex databases, which has been nicknamed the “Big Data revolution.” Researchers employ statistical techniques to condense and simplify the data while maintaining the majority of the important information in order to make the data more manageable. PCA (principal component analysis) is perhaps the most widely used approach. Imagine PCA as an oven with flour, sugar, and eggs serving as the input data....

Described in Nature Communications, the algorithm called “minimum epistasis interpolation” results in a visualization of how a protein could evolve to either become highly effective or not effective at all. They compared the functionality of thousands of versions of the protein, finding patterns in how mutations cause the protein to evolve from one functional form to another. “Epistasis” describes any interaction between genetic mutations in which the effect of one gene is dependent upon the presence of another....

Thermoelectric devices can directly convert heat to electricity. When we think about the amount of wasted heat in our environment like in air conditioning exhausts, vehicle engines or even body heat, it would be revolutionary if we could somehow scavenge this energy back from our surroundings and put it to good use. This goes some way to powering the thought behind wearable electronics and photonics, devices which could be worn on the skin and powered by body heat....

The ALMA telescope in Chile has transformed how we see the universe, showing us otherwise invisible parts of the cosmos. This array of incredibly precise antennas studies a comparatively high-frequency sliver of radio light: waves that range from a few tenths of a millimeter to several millimeters in length. Recently, scientists pushed ALMA to its limits, harnessing the array’s highest-frequency (shortest wavelength) capabilities, which peer into a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that straddles the line between infrared light and radio waves....

Climate change is not only a human problem; animals have to adapt to it as well. Some “warm-blooded” animals are shapeshifting and getting larger beaks, legs, and ears to better regulate their body temperatures as the planet gets hotter. Bird researcher Sara Ryding of Deakin University in Australia describes these changes in a review published on September 7th in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution. “A lot of the time when climate change is discussed in mainstream media, people are asking ‘can humans overcome this?...

The decision comes after NSF evaluated multiple assessments by independent engineering companies that found the telescope structure is in danger of a catastrophic failure and its cables may no longer be capable of carrying the loads they were designed to support. Furthermore, several assessments stated that any attempts at repairs could put workers in potentially life-threatening danger. Even in the event of repairs going forward, engineers found that the structure would likely present long-term stability issues....

Developed by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the program used several hundred gigabytes of data gleaned from 5,224 chest X-rays taken from 2,943 seriously ill patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the infections. The authors of the study, publishing in the journal npj Digital Medicine online May 12, cited the “pressing need” for the ability to quickly predict which COVID-19 patients are likely to have lethal complications so that treatment resources can best be matched to those at increased risk....

Charles Darwin’s landmark opus, On the Origin of the Species, ends with a beautiful summary of his theory of evolution, “There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved....

One of the most pressing questions in astronomy is how and when stars formed in the galaxies we see around us. The Universe contains hundreds of billions of galaxies and they come in many shapes and forms. Take for example the Sombrero Galaxy, the Black Eye Galaxy, the Whirlpool Galaxy or our own Milky Way stretching across the entire sky. Each harbors hundreds of billions of twinkly lights. How and when did all those stars emerge on the cosmic stage?...

Using a new machine learning method, a Stanford-led research team has slashed battery testing times – a key barrier to longer-lasting, faster-charging batteries for electric vehicles – by nearly fifteenfold. Battery performance can make or break the electric vehicle experience, from driving range to charging time to the lifetime of the car. Now, artificial intelligence has made dreams like recharging an EV in the time it takes to stop at a gas station a more likely reality, and could help improve other aspects of battery technology....

Far infrared and submillimeter sky surveys identified the first extreme galaxies from the emission of dust heated by their star formation activity. The rate of star formation is inferred from the luminosity of the galaxy, and this is calculated from the observed brightness and distance. As usual in astronomy, the distance parameter is key but difficult to measure. For these remote monsters it is generally obtained from the redshift of some strong lines emitted by the galaxy in the far infrared or submillimeter, typically from carbon monoxide (an abundant molecule) and/or from singly ionized atomic carbon....

A planet has been detected orbiting Barnard’s Star, a mere 6 light-years away. This breakthrough — announced in a paper published on November 14 in the journal Nature — is a result of the Red Dots and CARMENES projects, whose search for local rocky planets has already uncovered a new world orbiting our nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri. The planet, designated Barnard’s Star b, now steps in as the second-closest known exoplanet to Earth....