A research team has developed a new artificial photosynthesis device component with remarkable stability and longevity as it selectively converts sunlight and carbon dioxide into two promising sources of renewable fuels – ethylene and hydrogen. The researchers’ findings, which they recently reported in the journal Nature Energy, reveal how the device degrades with use, then demonstrate how to mitigate it. The authors also provide new insight into how electrons and charge carriers called “holes” contribute to degradation in artificial photosynthesis....

A new nanomaterial developed by scientists at the University of Bath could solve a conundrum faced by scientists probing some of the most promising types of future pharmaceuticals. Scientists who study the nanoscale – with molecules and materials 10,000 smaller than a pinhead – need to be able to test the way that some molecules twist, known as their chirality, because mirror-image molecules with the same structure can have very different properties....

The central regions of many glittering galaxies, our own Milky Way included, harbor cores of impenetrable darkness—black holes with masses equivalent to millions, or even billions, of suns. What is more, these supermassive black holes and their host galaxies appear to develop together, or “co-evolve.” Theory predicts that as galaxies collide and merge, growing ever more massive, so too do their dark hearts. Black holes by themselves are impossible to see, but their gravity can pull in surrounding gas to form a swirling band of material called an accretion disk....

Astronomers have used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) XMM-Newton to show a supermassive black hole six billion light years from Earth is spinning extremely rapidly. This first direct measurement of the spin of such a distant black hole is an important advance for understanding how black holes grow over time. Black holes are defined by just two simple characteristics: mass and spin. While astronomers have long been able to measure black hole masses very effectively, determining their spins has been much more difficult....

Many new MW satellite galaxies have been discovered in the last few years, but some have been called into question by more sensitive imaging campaigns and most have only poorly constrained properties. CfA astronomer Nelson Caldwell was a member of a team that used the Magellan Clay telescope and the Megacam instrument to obtain images of four nearby dwarf galaxies probing nearly sixteen times fainter than previous measurements. The images reveal new stars and other objects, including extended structures, and enabled the astronomers to revise key parameters of these galaxies....

Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist Kevin Schlaufman aims to settle the dispute. In a paper just published by the Astrophysical Journal, Schlaufman has set the upper boundary of planet mass between four and 10 times the mass of the planet Jupiter. (The paper is also archived here.) Schlaufman, an assistant professor in the university’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, says setting a limit is possible now mainly due to improvements in the technology and techniques of astronomical observation....

Similar equatorial jet streams have been identified on Saturn and on Earth, where a rare disruption of the usual wind pattern complicated weather forecasts in early 2016. The new study combines modeling of Jupiter’s atmosphere with detailed observations made over the course of five years from NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility, or IRTF, in Hawai’i. The findings could help scientists better understand the dynamic atmosphere of Jupiter and other planets, including those beyond our solar system....

In a new paper studying the galaxy cluster MS0735, “We’re looking at one of the most energetic outbursts ever seen from a supermassive black hole,” says Jack Orlowski-Scherer, lead author on this publication, “This is what happens when you feed a black hole and it violently burps out a giant amount of energy.” At the time of the study, Jack was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania and is now a research fellow at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec....

Blazars are among the largest and most energetic objects in the universe. Jets of matter (“jets”) shoot from the cores of these active galaxies shoot, which are accompanied by huge bursts of gamma rays. An international team led by Lars Fuhrmann from Bonn’s Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy has now for the first time confirmed a link between the gamma bursts and their counterparts in several radio frequencies. Furthermore, the researchers solved the mystery of the origin of the outbreaks: These come from the immediate vicinity of the supermassive black holes at the center of blazars....

Two international teams of astronomers have used the power of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to focus on jets from the huge black holes at the centers of galaxies and observe how they affect their surroundings. They have respectively obtained the best view yet of the molecular gas around a nearby, quiet black hole and caught an unexpected glimpse of the base of a powerful jet close to a distant black hole....

For the first time, astronomers have seen the image of a distant quasar split into multiple images by the effects of a cloud of ionized gas in our own Milky Way Galaxy. Such events were predicted as early as 1970, but the first evidence for one now has come from the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio telescope system. The scientists observed the quasar 2023+335, nearly 3 billion light-years from Earth, as part of a long-term study of ongoing changes in some 300 quasars....

Stellar lifetimes are measured in billions of years, so changes in their appearance rarely take place on a human timescale. Thus an opportunity to observe a star passing from one stage of life to another on a timescale of months to years is very exciting, as there are only a very few examples known. One such star is Sakurai’s Object (V4334 Sgr). First reported by a Japanese amateur astronomer in 1996 as a “nova-like object,” Sakurai’s Object had been only a few years before the faint central star of a planetary nebula....

Observations with the 8-meter Gemini North telescope, a program of the NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, have allowed astronomers to pinpoint the location of a Fast Radio Burst in a nearby galaxy — making it the closest known example to Earth and only the second repeating burst source to have its location pinpointed in the sky. The source of this burst of radio waves is located in an environment radically different from that seen in previous studies....

That’s why scientists have been astounded to observe one species — Atelopus, also known as harlequin frogs — defying the odds. Now, new research from ecologists at Michigan State University and partners in Ecuador is laying the groundwork for an unprecedented underdog story — or, if you will, an underfrog story. With a combination of literature review and fieldwork, the team has shown that as many as 32 harlequin frog species, once thought to be possibly extinct, are still surviving in the wild....

If true, this discovery could overturn the current textbook model for plant cell expansion, and it suggests similar biochemical processes could underlie cell growth in other organisms as well, including animals. The authors also hope their observations inspire the development of new smart materials mimicking the unique expansion of plant cell walls. Composed of a network of puzzle-like pieces, called pavement cells, the outermost layer of plants protects the structure and integrity of the specialized cells within....

DARPA created the Biostasis program to develop new possibilities for extending the golden hour, not by improving logistics or battlefield care, but by going after time itself, at least how the body manages it. Biostasis will attempt to directly address the need for additional time in continuously operating biological systems faced with catastrophic, life-threatening events. The program will leverage molecular biology to develop new ways of controlling the speed at which living systems operate, and thus extend the window of time following a damaging event before a system collapses....

New study finds customers buying home testing kits for COVID were often misled by third-party websites. Home-testing kits sold online in the UK and US in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic were provided with incomplete and in some cases, misleading information on how accurate they were, a new UK study by experts at the Universities of Warwick and Birmingham has found. Testing has been regarded as critical to managing the pandemic, the two main tests being molecular virus tests to detect current infection and antibodies tests to detect previous infection....

Or did you? In actuality, takes a bit of time for your brain to register the sensation from your fingertip. However, it does still happen extremely fast, with the touch signal traveling through your nerves at over 100 miles per hour. In fact, some nerve signals are even faster, approaching speeds of 300 miles per hour. Scientists at Caltech have just developed a new ultrafast camera that can record footage of these impulses as they travel through nerve cells....

Most carbon nanotube (CNT) production today is unorganized CNT architectures that is used in bulk composite materials and thin films. However, for many uses, organized CNT architectures, like vertically aligned forests, provide critical advantages for exploiting the properties of individual CNTs in macroscopic systems. “Robust synthesis of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes at large scale is required to accelerate deployment of numerous cutting-edge devices to emerging commercial applications,” said LLNL scientist and lead author Francesco Fornasiero....

A project led by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History has excavated the Panga ya Saidi cave site, in the coastal hinterland of Kenya. The excavations and analyses, announced in Nature Communications, represent the longest archaeological sequence in East Africa over the last 78,000 years. The evidence for gradual cultural changes does not support dramatic revolutions, and despite being close to the coast, there is no evidence that humans were using coastal ‘super-highways’ for migrations....