“The men and women in U.S. Space Command and the U.S. Space Force are executing our 24/7, no-fail missions to protect and defend our nation’s space centers,” Space Force Gen. John W. Raymond, who also serves as commander of U.S. Space Command, said during a telephone news conference today at the Pentagon. “Whether it’s operating in an increasingly competitive, congested or contested space domain hundreds of thousands of miles above us or continuing to provide space-enabling capabilities to the joint and allied force, mission partners and commercial sector, we’re safely and effectively conducting our missions,” he said....

Most models explaining how viruses are transmitted focus on viral particles escaping one person to infect a nearby person. A study on the role of microscopic particles in how viruses are transmitted suggests pollen is nothing to sneeze at. In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, Talib Dbouk and Dimitris Drikakis investigate how pollen facilitates the spread of an RNA virus like the COVID-19 virus. The study draws on cutting-edge computational approaches for analyzing fluid dynamics to mimic the pollen movement from a willow tree, a prototypical pollen emitter....

Biomass is attracting growing interest from researchers as a source of renewable, sustainable, and clean energy. It can be converted into bio-oil by thermochemical methods, such as gasification, liquefaction, and pyrolysis, and used to produce fuels, chemicals, and biomaterials. In Journal for Renewable and Sustainable Energy, researchers from Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Machinery Sciences in China share their work on the physicochemical properties and antioxidant activity of wood vinegar and tar fraction in bio-oil produced from hazelnut shells pyrolysis at 400 degrees Celsius to 1,000 C....

A pair of over-the-counter compounds has been found in preliminary tests to inhibit the virus that causes COVID-19, University of Florida (UF) Health researchers have found. The combination includes diphenhydramine, an antihistamine used for allergy symptoms. When paired with lactoferrin, a protein found in cow and human milk, the compounds were found to hinder the SARS-CoV-2 virus during tests in monkey cells and human lung cells. The findings by David A....

A Phase 3 clinical trial designed to evaluate if an investigational vaccine can prevent symptomatic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in adults has begun. The vaccine, known as mRNA-1273, was co-developed by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotechnology company Moderna, Inc., and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. The trial, which will be conducted at U.S. clinical research sites, is expected to enroll approximately 30,000 adult volunteers who do not have COVID-19....

An emerging super-black nanotechnology that is to be tested for the first time this fall on the International Space Station will be applied to a complex, 3-D component critical for suppressing stray light in a new, smaller, less-expensive solar coronagraph designed to ultimately fly on the orbiting outpost or as a hosted payload on a commercial satellite. The super-black carbon-nanotube coating, whose development is six years in the making, is a thin, highly uniform coating of multi-walled nanotubes made of pure carbon about 10,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair....

The Institute for Astrophysics at the University of Göttingen calibrated the data, a task that is fundamental to understanding the minute affect the motion of the planet or planets exert on a star. The Institute is also responsible for the analysis of the enormous amount of complex data sent from the observatory. Every day, fresh information arrives at the institute and is converted into numbers that the CARMENES consortium scientists can then interpret as stellar motion....

Supermassive black holes, with masses ranging from millions to billions of Suns, sit at the core of most massive galaxies across the Universe. We don’t know exactly how these huge, enormously dense objects took shape, nor what triggers a fraction of them to start devouring the surrounding matter at extremely intense rates, radiating copiously across the electromagnetic spectrum and turning their host galaxies into ‘active galactic nuclei’. Tackling these open questions in modern astrophysics is among the main goals of two future missions in ESA’s space science programme: Athena, the Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics, and LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna....

According to the EPA, in a response to a report published by 12 scientists last March, they will collaborate with other federal agencies to assess whether the traces of chemicals found in food, cosmetics, pesticides, and plastics can affect human development and reproduction. They will evaluate whether current testing is capturing effects linked to hormone mimics. This effort was designed to meet immediate science-policy needs. There has been a longstanding disagreement in the scientific community whether exposure to substances that mimic or block estrogen, testosterone and other hormones has any effect on human health....

University of Maryland School of Medicine Study questions routine sleep studies to evaluate snoring in children and finds treatment solely based on sleep studies unreliable in children with sleep apnea. Pediatricians routinely advise parents of children who snore regularly and have sleepiness, fatigue, or other symptoms consistent with sleep-disordered breathing, to get a sleep study; this can help determine whether their child has obstructive sleep apnea, which is often treated with surgery to remove the tonsils and adenoids (adenotonsillectomy)....

LIVE, 6:30 p.m. Eastern: NASA TV coverage of the launch of TESS, NASA’s new planet-hunting mission.Launch is targeted at 6:51 p.m. EDT. TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is an all-sky survey mission that will discover thousands of exoplanets around nearby bright stars. TESS is launching aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.Status updates: TESS launch blog. Alternate stream: NASA TV Countdown clocks are ticking at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida as NASA’s next planet-hunting spacecraft awaits liftoff aboard a Falcon 9 rocket at 6:51 p....

Each year, thousands of natural meltwater lakes form on the surface of the ice sheet’s high-elevation interior, where ice can be more than a half-mile thick. As these lakes drain, they form large water-filled cavities between the ice and the bedrock. By combining field observations with mathematical models and laboratory experiments, Princeton University-led researchers discovered that these blisters push the surface of the ice upward, then cause it to gradually drop down as the water permeates into the subglacial drainage system, according to a report in the journal Nature Communications....

“Webb is the highest priority project for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, and the largest international space science project in U.S. history. All the observatory’s flight hardware is now complete, however, the issues brought to light with the spacecraft element are prompting us to take the necessary steps to refocus our efforts on the completion of this ambitious and complex observatory,” said acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot. Testing the hardware on the observatory’s telescope element and spacecraft element demonstrate that these systems individually meet their requirements....

We asked members of the science team observing Chariklo to tell us more about this unique system, the occultation technique, and what they learned from their Webb observations. In 2013, Felipe Braga-Ribas and collaborators, using ground-based telescopes, discovered that Chariklo hosts a system of two thin rings. Such rings had been expected only around large planets such as Jupiter and Neptune. The astronomers had been watching a star as Chariklo passed in front of it, blocking the starlight as they had predicted....

There are hundreds of coronaviruses, most of which circulate among such animals as pigs, camels, bats, and cats. Sometimes those viruses jump to humans—called a spillover event—and can cause disease. Four of the seven known coronaviruses that sicken people cause only mild to moderate disease. Three can cause more serious, even fatal, disease. SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV) emerged in November 2002 and caused severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). That virus disappeared by 2004....

A new research paper examining the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa could hold crucial insights for policymakers grappling with the coronavirus pandemic—namely, the importance of public trust in institutions during health crises. The study, co-authored by Prof. Oeindrila Dube of the University of Chicago, looked at social sentiments toward government-run health care operations in Sierra Leone, and subsequent effects on the public’s utilization of health care services. The results suggest that low levels of trust in government-run clinics can result in widespread communal contagion....

When electrons collide with positrons, their antimatter counterparts, unstable pairs can form in which both types of particle orbit around each other. Named ‘positronium’, physicists have now produced this intriguing structure using a diverse range of positron targets – from atomic gases to metal films. However, they have yet to achieve the same result from vapors of nanoparticles, whose unique properties are influenced by the ‘gases’ of free electrons they contain in well-defined, nanoscopic regions....

Jun Kitazono, a corresponding author of the study and project researcher at the Department of General Systems Studies at the University of Tokyo, conducted the study, which was published in the journal Cerebral Cortex. “Where in the brain consciousness resides has been one of the biggest questions in science,” said Associate Professor Masafumi Oizumi, corresponding author and head of the lab conducting the study. “Although we have not reached a conclusive answer, much empirical evidence has been accumulated in the course of searching for the minimal mechanisms sufficient for conscious experience, or the neural correlates of consciousness....

Despite a concerted global scientific effort, doctors still lack a clear picture of why this is. Could genetic differences explain the differences we see in symptoms and severity of COVID-19? To test this, we used computer models to analyze known genetic variation within the human immune system. The results of our modeling suggest that there are in fact differences in people’s DNA that could influence their ability to respond to a SARS-CoV-2 infection....

Some European nations have started to reduce their use of oil and natural gas as the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to put pressure on the world’s energy supplies. However, some nations have sought to increase domestic fossil fuel production in order to reduce costs and alleviate their current fuel shortage. That strategy is incompatible with the emissions reductions required to achieve the Paris Agreement’s 2-degree climate goal. In order to meet climate targets, we must fundamentally transform how we supply and use energy, which is a challenge that can only be solved through energy innovation....