“By harnessing acoustic forces, we have created a new technology that enables myriad materials to be printed in a drop-on-demand manner,” said Jennifer Lewis, the Hansjorg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the senior author of the paper. Lewis is also a core faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and the Jianming Yu Professor of Arts and Sciences at Harvard....

Many things point to the existence of dark matter. The way in which galaxies move in galactic clusters, or how fast stars circle the center of a galaxy results in calculations that indicate that there must be far more mass present than what we can see. Approximately 85 percent of our Milky Way for example consists of a substance that is not visible and which can only be detected based on its gravitational effects....

The Very Large Telescope Interferometer at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile has obtained the sharpest view ever of the dusty disc around an aging star. For the first time such features can be compared to those around young stars — and they look surprisingly similar. It is even possible that a disc appearing at the end of a star’s life might also create a second generation of planets. As they approach the ends of their lives many stars develop stable discs of gas and dust around them....

Meteors have a wide range of sizes and compositions, and meteorites can land pretty much anyplace at any time. Moreover, individual events aren’t repeated. Meteor astronomers must therefore rely on accurate measurements of available observations or statistical processing of large data sets to formulate predictions and theories. The best current models, however, lack firm constraints on key variables like the luminosity of a trail versus the object’s loss of kinetic energy....

According to Einstein, whenever massive objects interact, they produce gravitational waves — distortions in the very fabric of space and time — that ripple outward across the universe at the speed of light. While astronomers have found indirect evidence of these disturbances, the waves have so far eluded direct detection. Ground-based observatories designed to find them are on the verge of achieving greater sensitivities, and many scientists think that this discovery is just a few years away....

Today’s atmosphere likely bears little trace of its primordial self: Geochemical evidence suggests that Earth’s atmosphere may have been completely obliterated at least twice since its formation more than 4 billion years ago. However, it’s unclear what interplanetary forces could have driven such a dramatic loss. Now researchers at MIT, Hebrew University, and Caltech have landed on a likely scenario: A relentless blitz of small space rocks, or planetesimals, may have bombarded Earth around the time the moon was formed, kicking up clouds of gas with enough force to permanently eject small portions of the atmosphere into space....

The precise effect of smaller class sizes can vary between countries, academic subjects, years, and different cognitive and non-cognitive skills, with many other factors likely playing a role. These findings are reported in a paper in Research Papers in Education. Smaller class sizes in schools are generally seen as highly desirable, especially by parents. With smaller class sizes, teachers can more easily maintain control and give more attention to each pupil....

Solar Orbiter, a collaboration between the European Space Agency, or ESA, and NASA, will have its first opportunity to launch from Cape Canaveral on February 7, 2020, at 11:15 p.m. EST. Launching on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, the spacecraft will use Venus’s and Earth’s gravity to swing itself out of the ecliptic plane — the swath of space, roughly aligned with the Sun’s equator, where all planets orbit....

University of Arizona researcher Jekan Thanga is taking scientific inspiration from an unlikely source: the biblical tale of Noah’s Ark. Rather than two of every animal, however, his solar-powered ark on the moon would store cryogenically frozen seed, spore, sperm and egg samples from 6.7 million Earth species. Thanga and a group of his undergraduate and graduate students outline the lunar ark concept, which they call a “modern global insurance policy,” in a paper presented over the weekend during the IEEE Aerospace Conference (see video below)....

V3Solar has contracted with Nectar Design, an award-winning product development company located in Southern California, to complete the engineering and commercial design of V3Solar’s Spin Cell Technology – “The most efficient energy under the sun.” The Spin Cell is a game-changing solar technology that has now been verified through third-party testing to produce over 20X more electricity while using the same type and amount of photovoltaic (PV) material as flat, static panels....

Spin ice materials are extremely unusual as they possess so-called defects which behave as the single pole of a magnet. These single pole magnets, also known as magnetic monopoles, do not exist in nature; when every magnetic material is cut into two it will always create a new magnet with a north and south pole. For decades scientists have been looking far and wide for evidence of naturally occurring magnetic monopoles in the hope of finally grouping the fundamental forces of nature into a so-called theory of everything, putting all of physics under one roof....

“We turned cells into chemical engineers of a sort, that use materials we provide to construct functional polymers that change their behaviors in specific ways,” said Karl Deisseroth, professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, who co-led the work. In the March 20 edition of Science, the researchers explain how they developed genetically targeted chemical assembly, or GTCA, and used the new method to build artificial structures on mammalian brain cells and on neurons in the tiny worm called C....

But are stellar flybys really capable of knocking planets, comets, and asteroids askew, reshaping entire planetary systems? UC Berkeley and Stanford University astronomers think they have now found a smoking gun. A planet orbiting a young binary star may have been perturbed by another pair of stars that skated too close to the system between 2 and 3 million years ago, soon after the planet formed from a swirling disk of dust and gas....

The mission carefully monitors the lander’s power level, which has been declining steadily as dust accumulates on its solar arrays. By Monday, October 3, the storm had grown large enough and was lofting so much dust that the thickness of the dusty haze in the Martian atmosphere had increased by nearly 40% around InSight. With less sunlight reaching the lander’s solar panels, its energy fell from 425 watt-hours per Martian day, or sol, to just 275 watt-hours per sol....

“Our work is the first study to use coronavirus aerosols for evaluating filtration efficiency of face masks and air filters,” said corresponding author Yun Shen, a UC Riverside assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering. “Previous studies have used surrogates of saline solution, polystyrene beads, and bacteriophages — a group of viruses that infect bacteria.” The study, led by engineers at UC Riverside and The George Washington University, compared the effectiveness of surgical and cotton masks, a neck gaiter, and electrospun nanofiber membranes at removing coronavirus aerosols to prevent airborne transmission....

Over the long haul — when students took a similar test nine months later — the boost did not last. Scores dropped to floor levels, with everyone failing and performance averaging less than 25% percent for both groups. However, targeted memory reactivation (TMR) may aid during deep sleep, when memories are theorized to be reactivated and moved from temporary storage in one part of the brain to more permanent storage in other parts, researchers said....

A group of 20 young students who have shown the character trait that NASA’s Perseverance rover is named for received messages of encouragement directly from that six-wheeled scientist on Mars. Nominated by educators and community leaders from across the country, the cohort is the first group in the agency’s “You’ve Got Perseverance!” awards, which honor U.S. students in sixth through eighth grade who have shown that nothing will deter them from their educational journey....

Mutations change the shape of the COVID-19 spike protein, preventing antibody recognition and enabling the virus to escape vaccine-induced immunity; however, the extent to which vaccine recipients are immune from the Delta variant is unknown. To quantify the capacity of different variants (Alpha, Beta and Delta) to evade protective immune response in vaccines, researchers analyzed serum samples collected from healthy people who had received either the Pfizer or Astra Zeneca vaccine....

Consuming flavonoid-rich items such as apples and tea protects against cancer and heart disease, particularly for smokers and heavy drinkers, according to new research from Edith Cowan University (ECU). Researchers from ECU’s School of Medical and Health Sciences analyzed data from the Danish Diet, Cancer, and Health cohort that assessed the diets of 53,048 Danes over 23 years. They found that people who habitually consumed moderate to high amounts of foods rich in flavonoids, compounds found in plant-based foods and drinks, were less likely to die from cancer or heart disease....

The study, which used Finnish register data with over 1.4 million participants, examined the relationships between diagnosed depression and fertility, the number of children, and the age at first birth for all men and women born in Finland between 1960 and 1980. “One of the main results was that depression was associated with a lower likelihood of having children and a lower number of children among men and women. Depression was also linked to a slightly lower age at first birth”, says principal investigator Kateryna Golovina from the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies....