Gamma-ray bursts release not only gamma rays, but also radio waves, optical light, and X-rays. When the efficiency of converting explosion energy to emitted energy is high, the total energy of the explosion can be determined by summing up all the emitted energy. However, when the conversion efficiency is low or uncertain, measuring only the emitted energy is not sufficient to calculate the total explosion energy. Now, a team of astrophysicists has succeeded in measuring a gamma-ray burst’s hidden energy by utilizing light polarization....

IBS researchers in South Korea extend the understanding of energy flow in chemical reactions and show that it may produce useful molecular swimmers. Steve Granick, Director of the IBS Center for Soft and Living Matter and Dr. Huan Wang, Senior Research Fellow, report together with 5 interdisciplinary colleagues in the July 31 issue of the journal Science that common chemical reactions accelerate Brownian diffusion by sending long-range ripples into the surrounding solvent....

Leonardo da Vinci observed five centuries ago that air bubbles, if big enough, periodically deviate in a zigzag or spiral from a straight-line movement. However, no quantitative description of the phenomenon or physical mechanism to explain this periodic motion had ever been found. The authors of this new paper have developed a numerical discretization technique to characterize precisely the bubble’s air-water interface, which enables them to simulate its motion and explore its stability....

According to common theory, dark matter must exist because otherwise stars would not continue to rotate around the center of their galaxies as they in fact do. Among the particularly favored candidates for dark matter are so-called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. Researchers are searching for these in the Italian Gran Sasso underground laboratory, for example. But recent scientific publications in the field of astroparticle physics are increasingly taking the view that WIMPs are unlikely to be viable prospects when it comes to dark matter....

Researchers at the Stockholm Environment Institute (Somerville and Seattle, USA) and Earth Track, Inc. (Cambridge, MA, USA) examined 16 subsidies and environmental regulatory exemptions, providing one of the first estimates of how government subsidies will affect investment decisions for new gas fields in the coming decade. Their results are published today (July 29, 2021) in the IOP Publishing journal, Environmental Research Letters. Despite repeated pledges to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies, the United States — the world’s largest current oil and gas producer — continues to provide billions of dollars each year to the oil and gas industry through various support measures....

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activities have risen drastically over the last century and a half and are seen as the primary cause of global warming and abnormal weather patterns. So, there has been considerable research focus, in a number of fields, on lowering our CO2 emissions and its atmospheric levels. One promising strategy is to chemically break down, or ‘reduce,’ CO2 using photocatalysts — compounds that absorb light energy and provide it to reactions, speeding them up....

Researchers from the University of Nottingham have discovered that the novel insulin-like peptide hormone, called INSL3, is consistent over long periods of time and is an important early biomarker for the prediction of age-linked disease. Their latest findings will be published today (November 8) in the journal Frontiers in Endocrinology. INSL3 is made by the same cells in the testes that make testosterone, but unlike testosterone which fluctuates throughout a man’s life, INSL3 remains consistent, with the level at puberty remaining largely the same throughout a man’s life, decreasing only slightly into old age....

That “archived” heat, currently trapped below the surface, has the potential to melt the region’s entire sea-ice pack if it reaches the surface, researchers say. The study appears online on August 29 in the journal Science Advances. “We document a striking ocean warming in one of the main basins of the interior Arctic Ocean, the Canadian Basin,” said lead author Mary-Louise Timmermans, a professor of geology and geophysics at Yale University....

Well, it’s happening. We look at the Earth from space and we measure it on the ground. And what we see is that the planet’s climate is changing. The last years have been the warmest since modern record-keeping began. It’s serious. Even a little change in temperature can have big effects. And we’re seeing some of those effects now. Sea levels are rising. We’re seeing more extreme events like heatwaves and heavy rainfall and wildfire....

Located in the constellation of Orion, roughly 1,350 light-years away from Earth, the Orion Nebula is an area rich in matter where many stars are formed. Its environment is thought to be similar to the environment in which our solar system was born more than 4.5 billion years ago. Therefore, studying the Orion Nebula allows scientists to understand the conditions in which our solar system formed. “Orion Bar is a prototype region for processes that occur throughout our galaxy and the universe as stars continually irradiate nearby material,” said Felipe Alarcon....

By viewing the Universe at infrared wavelengths with an unprecedented sensitivity Webb will open up a new window to the cosmos. With infrared wavelengths it can see the first stars and galaxies forming after the Big Bang. Its infrared vision also allows Webb to study stars and planetary systems forming inside thick clouds of gas and dust that are opaque to visible light. The primary goals of Webb are to study galaxy, star, and planet formation in the Universe....

Members of the New York Yankees, U.S. Olympic gymnast Kara Eaker and U.K. health secretary Sajid Javid are some of those diagnosed with what is called a “breakthrough infection.” As scary as the term may sound, the bottom line is that the existing COVID-19 vaccines are still very good at preventing symptomatic infections, and breakthrough infections happen very rarely. But just how common and how dangerous are they? Here’s a guide to what you need to know....

The study is based on data from Israel’s first two coronavirus waves before vaccines were widely available. It found that people with a vitamin D deficiency are more likely to develop a severe or critical case of COVID-19 compared to people who had sufficient levels of the vitamin in their blood. Patients with a vitamin D deficiency were 14 times more likely to have a severe or critical case of COVID-19....

Massive, rapid production of vaccines to fight COVID-19 will require firms to share know-how not just about what to make, but how to make it, write Nicholson Price and colleagues in a new Policy Forum published in the journal Science. They cite the recent approval granted by the U.S. Department of Justice to six pharmaceutical firms to exchange “technical information” on manufacturing processes related to monoclonal antibody (mAb) candidates as an example — one that might pave the way for standardizing manufacturing of biologics going forward....

“We see that diet influences the motility of the sperm, and we can link the changes to specific molecules in them. Our study has revealed rapid effects that are noticeable after one to two weeks,” says Anita Öst, senior lecturer in the Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine at Linköping University, and head of the study. Sperm quality can be harmed by several environmental and lifestyle factors, of which obesity and related diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, are well-known risk factors for poor sperm quality....

Researchers from Case Western Reserve University have discovered a mechanism in brain tissue that may explain why women are more susceptible to Alzheimer’s disease. They believe that this discovery may help develop new treatments for the disease. Specifically, they discovered that the female brain displays higher production of a certain enzyme in comparison to the male brain, leading to increased accumulation of a protein known as tau. Alzheimer’s disease sufferers’ brain nerve cells accumulate harmful protein clumps because of the tau protein....

The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) researchers have revealed new genes and genetic changes related to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the most comprehensive whole genome sequencing analysis of autism to date, improving our understanding of the genomic basis of ASD. The research, published in Cell, utilized whole genome sequencing to analyze the entire genomes of over 7,000 individuals with autism and an additional 13,000 siblings and family members. The study found 134 genes connected to ASD and identified a range of genetic changes, particularly gene copy number variations, that are likely to be linked to autism, including ASD-associated rare variants present in about 14% of participants with autism....

The Integral, Fermi and Swift space observatories have used the magnifying power of a cosmic lens to explore the inner regions of a supermassive black hole. Gamma rays are highly energetic radiation emitted by some of the most extreme objects in our Universe. Jets of gamma rays moving at close to the speed of light stream from the areas around black holes, for example. These jets are thought to be emitted by superheated material spinning wildly as it is devoured by the hungry black hole....

What transpired over the following several weeks in the fall of 2020, described in a case study recently published in the European Medical Journal, was notable and representative of a newer approach to effectively treating a strange disease, the doctors stated. The study focuses on the medical case of a 5-year-old girl who suffered from anti-NMDAR (N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor) encephalopathy, a rare and difficult-to-diagnose malfunction of the brain. Unresponsive to treatments, the child had been transferred to a rehabilitation center and been in a catatonic state for three months when a team of Rutgers physicians were called in to help....

A key advance, newly reported by chemists from Brown and Yale Universities, could lead to a cheaper and more sustainable way to make acrylate, an important commodity chemical used to make materials from polyester fabrics to diapers. Chemical companies churn out billions of tons of acrylate each year, usually by heating propylene, a compound derived from crude oil. “What we’re interested in is enhancing both the economics and the sustainability of how acrylate is made,” said Wesley Bernskoetter, assistant professor of chemistry at Brown, who led the research....