Now, researchers at MIT have found a way to overcome this effect, producing a surface design that drastically reduces the effects of condensation, although at a slight sacrifice in performance. The new findings are described in the journal ACS Nano, in a paper by graduate student Kyle Wilke, professor of mechanical engineering and department head Evelyn Wang, and two others. Creating a surface that can shed virtually all liquids requires a precise kind of texture that creates an array of microscopic air pockets separated by pillars or ridges....

All oxygen-dependent organisms on the planet produce carbon dioxide as a result of metabolic processes necessary to sustain life. Total carbon dioxide production from any species is linked to the average metabolic rate, the average body size, and the total number of individuals of the species. People with obesity have greater carbon dioxide production from oxidative metabolism than individuals with normal weight. Also, maintenance of greater body weights requires more food and drinks to be produced and transported to the consumers....

Now a group of researchers from Lehigh, Seoul National University in South Korea and the University of Cambridge in the UK has worked together to produce the first open-source all-atom models of a full-length S protein. The researchers say this is of particular importance because the S protein plays a central role in viral entry into cells, making it a main target for vaccine and antiviral drug development. This video illustrates how to build the membrane system from their SARS-CoV-2 S protein models....

Set against a piece of black construction paper, the wings of the male cattleheart butterfly look even blacker than black. “Some animals have taken black to an extreme,” said Alex Davis, a graduate student in the lab of Duke University biologist Sönke Johnsen. The butterflies they study are 10 to 100 times darker than charcoal, fresh asphalt, black velvet, and other everyday black objects. As little as 0.06% of the light that hits them is reflected back to the eye....

The clinical trial, which was funded by the Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation in South Australia and published in Clinical & Experimental Allergy, tested the effectiveness of a therapy that delivers sequential doses of boiled peanuts followed by roasted peanuts for overcoming peanut allergies in children. The trial built on previous research conducted by senior author and Flinders University’s College of Medicine and Public Health Associate Professor Tim Chataway showing that heat affects the protein structure and allergic properties of peanuts, meaning they were less likely to cause a severe allergic reaction....

Researchers from Rice University, DuPont Central Research and Development, and Stanford University have announced a full-scale field test of an innovative process that gently but quickly destroys some of the world’s most pervasive and problematic pollutants. The technology, called PGClear, originated from basic scientific research at Rice during a 10-year, federally-funded initiative to use nanotechnology to clean the environment. PGClear uses a combination of palladium and gold metal to break down hazardous compounds like vinyl chloride, trichloroethene (TCE) and chloroform into nontoxic byproducts....

In a new study from Skoltech and the University of Kentucky, researchers found a new connection between quantum information and quantum field theory. This work attests to the growing role of quantum information theory across various areas of physics. The paper was published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Quantum information plays an increasingly important role as an organizing principle connecting various branches of physics. In particular, the theory of quantum error correction, which describes how to protect and recover information in quantum computers and other complex interacting systems, has become one of the building blocks of the modern understanding of quantum gravity....

A team of physicists, including NJIT’s Gregory Fleishman, has discovered previously undetected energy in the Sun’s coronal loops. The Sun’s corona, invisible to the human eye except when it appears briefly as a fiery halo of plasma during a solar eclipse, remains a puzzle even to scientists who study it closely. Beginning 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) from the star’s surface and extending millions more in every direction, it is more than a hundred times hotter than lower layers much closer to the fusion reactor at the Sun’s core....

Theoreticians in two different fields defied the common knowledge that planets orbit stars like the Sun. They proposed the possibility of thousands of planets around a supermassive black hole. “With the right conditions, planets could be formed even in harsh environments, such as around a black hole,” says Keiichi Wada, a professor at Kagoshima University researching active galactic nuclei which are luminous objects energized by black holes. According to the latest theories, planets are formed from fluffy dust aggregates in a protoplanetary disk around a young star....

USC scientists identify patterns of white matter connectivity exclusive to core autistic symptoms, pointing out a potential flaw in previous autism neuroscience research. Scientists have identified a signature pattern of white matter connectivity exclusive to the brains of autistic people distinct from that in the brains of people with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). These new study results were obtained from an international research team led by the University of Southern California (USC)....

Deployable Tower Assembly Testing: Completed This telescoping tower helps Webb maintain its necessary super cool operating temperatures by separating its mirrors and instruments from the comparatively warmer Sun-facing side and spacecraft bus. When fully deployed, the tower reaches ten feet in length, which also gives the observatory’s sunshield just enough room to unfold its complex mechanisms. Recently this tower was fully extended for the very last time in testing, just as it would once in space....

Rudloff carried out a thorough experiment on this topic while pursuing his Ph.D. in the department of communication psychology under Professor Markus Appel. Along with Appel, he confronted more than 600 Americans with different headlines, such as “Trump’s first 3 years created 1.5 million fewer jobs than Obama’s last 3.” Participants were asked to rate how accurate these statements were. Epistemic beliefs were assessed with a questionnaire Participants then completed an extensive questionnaire....

The Northwestern University study underscores the importance of receiving a second dose of vaccine, not only because it is commonly known that immunity from vaccines wanes over time, but also because of the risk posed by emerging variants, including the highly contagious delta variant. The study also showed that prior exposure to SARS-CoV-2 does not guarantee a high level of antibodies, nor does it guarantee a robust antibody response to the first vaccine dose....

In the international journal Nature Communications, scientists from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, King Abdullah University for Science and Technology in Thuwal (Saudi Arabia) and the University of Iceland have now published a study that makes a good case for the Red Sea being quite mature and having an almost classical oceanic evolution. “Using a combination of different methods, we can show for the first time that the structures in the Red Sea are typical for a young but already fully developed ocean basin,” says Dr....

While elected officials in the U.S. debate a proposed “Green New Deal” and U.S. President Donald Trump derides “prophets of doom” in Davos, environmental scientists continue to gather evidence about how changes to industry could mitigate the harms of climate change. In a News and Views article in Nature Climate Change (“Cleaner Air is a Win-Win”) Lehigh University Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, Benjamin S. Felzer, highlights the importance of a new analysis based on Earth system modeling, showing that cleaning up ozone precursors within specific economic sectors can increase the mitigation potential of the land carbon sink by enhancing the ability of vegetation to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis....

The study by the Environmental Committee of the Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS) reviewed interventions that have reduced air pollution at its source. It looked for outcomes and time to achieve those outcomes in several settings, finding that the improvements in health were striking. Starting at week one of a ban on smoking in Ireland, for example, there was a 13 percent drop in all-cause mortality, a 26 percent reduction in ischemic heart disease, a 32 percent reduction in stroke, and a 38 percent reduction in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)....

A new report commissioned by 20 different governments states that more than 100 million people will die by 2030 if nothing is done to tackle climate change. Global economic growth will also be cut by 3.2% of gross domestic product (GDP). The report was authored by the humanitarian organization DARA. Global temperatures are on the rise due to greenhouse gas emissions. While scientists disagree on mankind’s role in global warming, there’s no denying that record melts at the polar ice caps, extreme weather, drought, and rising sea levels will threaten populations and livelihoods....

Anesthetics may alter coloration in certain fish species, influencing the traits researchers are trying to study. Fish use colorful patterns to signal to each other, including advertising for mates and warding off rivals. Studying these colors, especially in small and squirmy species, sometimes entails anesthetizing and photographing the fish to obtain color measurements from digital images. Typical measurements include the hue (what we typically think of as the “color”), saturation (the intensity of the color, a function of how much gray is mixed in with it, also called “chroma”), and brightness (how much white or black is mixed in with the color)....

Study conducted at BIDMC is among the first to compare the impact of COVID-19 on patients and hospital resources versus the impact of influenza. In a paper published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, physician-researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) assessed the relative impact of COVID-19 on patients hospitalized with the viral infection in March and April 2020, versus patients hospitalized with influenza during the last five flu seasons at the medical center....

A team of researchers studying the effectiveness of different types of face masks has found that in order to provide the best protection against COVID-19, the fit of a mask is as important, or more important, than the material it is made of. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, carried out a series of different fit tests, and found that when a high-performance mask — such as an N95, KN95 or FFP2 mask — is not properly fitted, it performs no better than a cloth mask....