In classrooms and everyday conversation, explanations of global warming hinge on the greenhouse gas effect. In short, climate depends on the balance between two different kinds of radiation: The Earth absorbs incoming visible light from the sun, called “shortwave radiation,” and emits infrared light, or “longwave radiation,” into space. Upsetting that energy balance are rising levels of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), that increasingly absorb some of the outgoing longwave radiation and trap it in the atmosphere....

An international team, including researchers from the University of Cambridge, reported the discovery in the Journal of Paleontology. The paper’s senior author, Alan Tennyson from the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, discovered the fossils in 57 million-year-old beach boulders in North Otago, on New Zealand’s South Island, between 2016 and 2017. The fossils were then exposed from within the boulders by Al Manning. They have been identified as being between 59....

Sagan’s work inspired other researchers and futurists to take seriously the idea of terraforming. The key question was: Are there enough greenhouse gases and water on Mars to increase its atmospheric pressure to Earth-like levels? In 2018, a pair of NASA-funded researchers from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Northern Arizona University found that processing all the sources available on Mars would only increase atmospheric pressure to about 7 percent of that of Earth — far short of what is needed to make the planet habitable....

Electricity is a key ingredient in living bodies. We know that voltage differences are important in biological systems; they drive the beating of the heart and allow neurons to communicate with one another. But for decades, it wasn’t possible to measure voltage differences between organelles—the membrane-wrapped structures inside the cell—and the rest of the cell. A pioneering technology created by UChicago scientists, however, allows researchers to peer into cells to see how many different organelles use voltages to carry out functions....

Commonalities found between COVID-19 and Rheumatoid Arthritis could help development of new treatment strategies for Long Covid. The observations from the study – published in JCI Insight and led by the University of Glasgow’s Research into Inflammatory Arthritis Centre (RACE) in collaboration with the Fondazione A.Gemelli IRCCS in Italy – could help development of new treatment strategies for severe COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 syndrome, or Long Covid. The researchers observed that some rheumatoid arthritis patients who became infected with SARS-CoV-2 had ‘flares’ of joint pain and inflammation, which hinted at similarities between COVID-19 and rheumatoid arthritis....

A clinical trial has begun to evaluate whether the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, given together with the antibiotic azithromycin, can prevent hospitalization and death from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, is sponsoring the trial, which is being conducted by the NIAID-funded AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG). Teva Pharmaceuticals is donating medications for the study. The Phase 2b trial will enroll approximately 2,000 adults at participating ACTG sites across the United States....

Over 80 percent of 200 COVID-19 patients in a hospital in Spain have vitamin D deficiency, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Vitamin D is a hormone the kidneys produce that controls blood calcium concentration and impacts the immune system. Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to a variety of health concerns, although research is still underway into why the hormone impacts other systems of the body....

The research also demonstrates that it is possible to treat certain musculoskeletal conditions non-invasively by reducing this heightened sensory neuronal activity during a crucial age through the use of Botox or a specialized diet. Distal arthrogryposis (DA) is a disorder characterized by congenital joint deformities, or contractures, that often restrict movement in the hands and feet and is estimated to afflict roughly one in 3,000 individuals worldwide. Alleviating the symptoms often requires invasive surgeries....

To more effectively power the electrical grid, locomotives, and even electric cars, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists are turning to diamond as an ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor. Diamond has been shown to have superior carrier mobility, break down electric field and thermal conductivity, the most important properties to power electronic devices. It became especially desirable after the development of a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process for growth of high-quality single crystals....

While the Martinis Lab at UC Santa Barbara has been focusing on quantum computation, former postdoctoral fellow Pedram Roushan and several colleagues have been exploring qubits (quantum bits) for quantum simulation on a smaller scale. Their research appears in the current edition of the journal Nature. “While we’re waiting on quantum computers, there are specific problems from various fields ranging from chemistry to condensed matter that we can address systematically with superconducting qubits,” said Roushan, who is now a quantum electronics engineer at Google....

A new study led by the Center for Nutraceuticals in the University of Westminster shows that pink drinks can help to make you run faster and further compared to clear drinks. The researchers found that a pink drink can increase exercise performance by 4.4 percent and can also increase a ‘feel good’ effect which can make exercise seem easier. The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition, is the first investigation to assess the effect of drink color on exercise performance and provides the potential to open a new avenue of future research in the field of sports drinks and exercise....

Popigai is one of the largest and most well-preserved impact craters on Earth. About 36 million years ago, an asteroid slammed into northern Siberia and created one of the largest craters on Earth. Streaking in at an estimated speed of 20 kilometers (12 miles) per second, the asteroid made an impact that ejected millions of metric tons of material into the air. The asteroid—between 5 and 8 kilometers (3 to 5 miles) wide—created a crater nearly 100 kilometers (60 miles) in diameter....

Researchers also found that previously-infected patients with obesity, contrary to expectations, had a higher and more sustained immune response. New research to be presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2022, Lisbon, April 23-26) shows that, although over time the number of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies falls in both previously infected and vaccinated patients, the performance of antibodies improves only after previous infection (and not vaccination)....

At the heart of every white dwarf star—the dense stellar object that remains after a star has burned away its fuel reserve of gases as it nears the end of its life cycle—lies a quantum conundrum: as white dwarfs add mass, they shrink in size, until they become so small and tightly compacted that they cannot sustain themselves, collapsing into a neutron star. This puzzling relationship between a white dwarf’s mass and size, called the mass-radius relation, was first theorized by Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar in the 1930s....

Reported changes short lived, but research into this possible adverse reaction remains critical to the success of the vaccination program. Some women say their periods change after getting a COVID-19 vaccination. In The BMJ today (September 15, 2021), Dr. Victoria Male, a reproductive specialist at Imperial College London, says a link between menstrual changes after COVID-19 vaccination is plausible and should be investigated. Changes to periods or unexpected vaginal bleeding are not listed as common side effects of COVID-19 vaccination, she writes....

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) genetically sequenced the viral infections in 360 COVID patients. They found wide genetic variation in SARS-CoV-2 viruses, showing that all individual infections include multiple variants of the virus. Reporting about the virus usually highlights a single dominant strain, the researchers noted. This leads to under-reporting virus genetic variation and can have serious consequences in public health planning and response. “Our work brings attention to the complexity of infectious diseases that is often over-simplified when considering only the most abundant virus in an infection, and we demonstrate the importance of examining the variations that are historically considered noise,” said Ernest (Ricky) Chan....

Just as exciting, the same researchers also discovered for the first time that the planet has a neighbor. “Being able to measure the mass and density of K2-18b was tremendous, but to discover a new exoplanet was lucky and equally exciting,” says lead author Ryan Cloutier, a Ph.D. student in U of T Scarborough’s Centre for Planet Science, U of T’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Université de Montréal Institute for research on exoplanets (iREx)....

A form of quantum “weirdness” has been found, by researchers at Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC), to be a key ingredient for building a quantum computer. In a paper published in the journal Nature, IQC researchers have shown that quantum contextuality is a necessary resource to achieve the “magic” required for universal quantum computation. “Before these results, we didn’t necessarily know what resources were needed for a physical device to achieve the advantage of quantum information....

Researchers have found a way to marry human creativity and artificial intelligence (AI) creativity to dramatically boost the performance of deep learning. A team led by Alexander Wong, a Canada Research Chair in the area of AI and a professor of systems design engineering at the University of Waterloo, developed a new type of compact family of neural networks that could run on smartphones, tablets, and other embedded and mobile devices....

According to United Nations estimates, in 2020, “over 168 million worldwide will need humanitarian assistance and protection.” Many people experiencing humanitarian crises, often due to conflicts or natural disasters, lack access to basic needs, including food, shelter, and healthcare. As the co-authors point out in their commentary, these communities do not have “the infrastructure, support and health systems” to institute a comprehensive, public health response. These are places, which may have very little, if any health infrastructure– communities, which may not have any trained medical personnel or personal protective equipment....