For centuries, sailors who had traveled the world knew that the most powerful storms were located in the Southern Hemisphere. “The waves ran mountain-high and threatened to overwhelm [the ship] at every roll,” wrote one passenger on an 1849 voyage rounding the tip of South America. Years later, scientists analyzing satellite data confirmed sailors’ observations that the Southern Hemisphere experiences about 24% more storms than the Northern Hemisphere. However, the reason for this discrepancy was not known....

Actin is the second most abundant protein on earth, and scientists have extensively detailed the chemistry that enables it to string together into filaments that support the structures for muscle contraction and other cell movements. However, some questions have perplexed researchers for decades, such as why one end of the filament grows so much faster than the other end and how actin, once assembled into filaments, interacts with the energy-storing molecule ATP....

Approximately 360 million years ago, in the shallow subtropical waters above what is now the city of Cleveland, an armor-plated fish many believed to be up to 30 feet long ruled the seas. The species Dunkleosteus terrelli was Earth’s first vertebrate “superpredator” and lived during the Age of Fishes (Devonian Period)—when North America was near the latitude of what is now Rio de Janeiro. But in nearly 150 years of research since fossilized remains of the prehistoric big fish were discovered on the shores of Lake Erie in 1867, scientists may have made some incorrect assumptions about Dunkleosteus’ size and shark-like shape....

See more on the Strawberry Moon Here is a summary of celestial events between now and the full Moon after next (with times and angles based on the location of NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.) As summer begins, the daily periods of sunlight that were at their longest on the solstice begin to shorten. On Thursday, June 24, 2021 (the day of the full Moon), morning twilight will begin at 4:31 a....

New research from Dr. William Chopik, an associate professor in the Michigan State University Department of Psychology, and Dr. David Johnson from the University of Maryland, finds that people’s reason for swiping right is based primarily on attractiveness and the race of a potential partner, and that decisions are often made in less than a second. “Despite online dating becoming an increasingly popular way for people to meet one another, there is little research on how people connect with each other on these platforms,” explained Dr....

“You get a call from your program manager every once in a while, about some grants or panels, but a call from the director of the National Science Foundation? I’ve certainly never received a call from him before,” said Wood, a professor of mathematics. Wood, who had just emerged from a virtual department meeting, returned the missed call. NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan told her she was one of two recipients of this year’s Alan T....

In a forced game of molecular tug-of war, some strings of atoms can act like a lever, accelerating reactions 1000 times faster than other molecules. The discovery suggests that scientists could use these molecular levers to drive chemical and mechanical reactivity among atoms and ultimately engineer more efficient materials. “We are interested in designing new, stress-responsive materials, so we are trying to develop reactions that are very slow normally but that can be accelerated efficiently by force,” said Duke chemist Steve Craig, who headed the research....

This so-called “particle robotics” system — based on a project by MIT, Columbia Engineering, Cornell University, and Harvard University researchers — comprises many individual disc-shaped units, which the researchers call “particles.” The particles are loosely connected by magnets around their perimeters, and each unit can only do two things: expand and contract. (Each particle is about 6 inches in its contracted state and about 9 inches when expanded.) That motion, when carefully timed, allows the individual particles to push and pull one another in coordinated movement....

University of Colorado Boulder astronomers targeting one of the brightest quasars glowing in the universe some 11 billion years ago say “sideline quasars” likely teamed up with it to heat abundant helium gas billions of years ago, preventing small galaxy formation. CU-Boulder Professor Michael Shull and Research Associate David Syphers used the Hubble Space Telescope to look at the quasar — the brilliant core of an active galaxy that acted as a “lighthouse” for the observations — to better understand the conditions of the early universe....

RNA folding may help explain how the coronavirus became so hard to stop after it spilled over from wildlife to humans. We know that the coronavirus behind the COVID-19 crisis lived harmlessly in bats and other wildlife before it jumped the species barrier and spilled over to humans. Now, researchers at Duke University have identified a number of “silent” mutations in the roughly 30,000 letters of the virus’s genetic code that helped it thrive once it made the leap — and possibly helped set the stage for the global pandemic....

In a study of older adults, longer, more frequent daytime napping in a specific year predicted worse cognitive performance in the following year, and vice versa. Daytime napping is common among older adults. The longitudinal relationship between daytime napping and cognitive aging, however, is unknown. A new cohort study by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital found a bidirectional link between the two: excessive daytime napping predicted an increased future risk of Alzheimer’s dementia, and a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s dementia sped up the increase in daytime napping during aging....

As a result, the observation and research of atomic gas in and around galaxies are critical to the study of galaxy formation and evolution models. Observing the 21-cm fine structure line emission of atomic hydrogen in the radio waveband is the most direct way to explore atomic gas. Recent deep mapping observations of 21-cm line emission in the vicinity of the well-known compact group of galaxies “Stephan’s Quintet,” using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope’s (19-beam receiver) led by Xu Cong, a researcher from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), revealed a very large atomic gas structure with a length of about 2 million light-years (about 20 times the size of the Milky Way)....

Every two to seven years, an unusually warm pool of water – sometimes two to three degrees Celsius higher than normal – develops across the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean to create a natural short-term climate change event. This warm condition, known as El Niño, affects the local aquatic environment, but also spurs extreme weather patterns around the world, from flooding in California to droughts in Australia. This winter, the 2015-16 El Niño event will be better observed from space than any previous El Niño....

In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that since 1993, ocean waters have moved up the shore by almost 1 millimeter per decade. That’s on top of the 3-millimeter steady annual increase. This acceleration means we’ll gain an additional millimeter per year for each of the coming decades, potentially doubling what would happen to the sea level by 2100 if the rate of increase was constant....

Researchers have completed a new study of how well a variety of natural and synthetic fabrics filter particles of a similar size to the virus that causes COVID-19. Of the 32 cloth materials tested, three of the five most effective at blocking particles were 100% cotton and had a visible raised fiber or nap, such as found on flannels. Four of the five lowest performers were synthetic materials. The testing also showed that multiple fabric layers could improve cotton’s effectiveness even further....

The international team of geoscientists led by Prof. Silke Voigt from the Goethe University Frankfurt, Prof. Ireneusz Walaszczyk from the University of Warsaw and Dr. André Bornemann from LBEG have thoroughly investigated 40 meters of the geological strata sequence in the former limestone quarry at Hasselberg. The researchers determined that this is only sequence in the transition between Turonian and Coniacian without gaps and it therefore represents a perfect rock sequence to serve geoscientists from all over the world as a reference for their research — a “Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP)” or, in the jargon of geosciences, a “golden nail....

One of the physiopathological characteristics of COVID-19 that has most baffled the scientific and medical community is what is known as “silent hypoxemia” or “happy hypoxia.” Patients suffering this phenomenon, the causes of which are still unknown, have severe pneumonia with markedly decreased arterial blood oxygen levels (known as hypoxemia). However, they do not report dyspnea (subjective feeling of shortness of breath) or increased breathing rates, which are usually characteristic symptoms of people with hypoxemia from pneumonia or any other cause....

Understanding the structure of proteins that drive the growth of aggressive cancers is crucial in designing drugs that can effectively inhibit their growth. Scripps Research Institute scientists have revealed the three-dimensional structure of phosphoinositide 3-kinase alpha (PI3Kα), a protein frequently mutated in cancer cells, in a series of three papers published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Additionally, the research team has also provided insight into how this structure changes with cancer-associated mutations, which can open up new opportunities for drugs that can specifically target the mutated versions....

Dawn’s mission was extended several times as it explored Ceres and Vesta, which when combined, make up 45 percent of the mass of the main asteroid belt. Now, the spacecraft is about to run out of a key fuel, hydrazine. When that happens, most likely between September and October, Dawn will lose its ability to communicate with Earth. It will remain in a silent orbit around Ceres for decades. “Although it will be sad to see Dawn’s departure from our mission family, we are intensely proud of its many accomplishments,” said Lori Glaze, acting director of the Planetary Science Division at Headquarters in Washington....

According to the study, which was published in the journal Diabetes, higher levels of the bacterium Coprococcus are associated with improved insulin sensitivity, while higher levels of Flavonifractor in the gut microbiome are linked to decreased insulin sensitivity. For years, investigators have sought to understand why people develop diabetes by studying the composition of the microbiome, which is a collection of microorganisms that include fungi, bacteria, and viruses that live in the digestive tract....